examples in them of the inequalities and injustice that may occur in connection with distribution, and that so far from regarding them with indifference as economic facts unconnected with ethics, the public mind has treated them as ethical, and such they are, however much may be also claimed for their economical aspects. Had their economical qualities been those of physical phenomena independent of the human will, political interference would have been out of the question fully as much as to interfere with the operation of geological laws and forces, or to stop the action of gravitation. The ethical and the physical sphere do not coincide, as one is of persons and the other is of things. But in the phenomena of distribution, and the same is, at least, partly true of production, the subject-matter of both sciences is or consists of facts of will, and we can no more separate their ethical and economical features, as we can those of geology and ethics, than we can separate geometry and mathematics. The two subjects are too deeply implicated in social questions to be kept distinct practically, as they may be abstractly and theoretically. Of course, we shall be told that there is no intention to speak of their separation in any other than the abstract sense. But our reply is that we admit fully the fact and the importance of thus keeping them apart, while we are protesting against the tendency to construe this distinction as applying concretely and in practical matters so as to exclude conscience and morals from restraining the abuses of economic principles, a tendency which is encouraged by the failure of scientific economists to limit the nature of their conceptions, and to admit or emphasize the fact that economical phenomena have their ethical sides, however different may be the theoretical objects pursued by the two sciences. It is their support, consciously or unconsciously given to conceptions of common minds which cannot enter into the niceties of scientific distinction, that we are remonstrating against. We wish to emphasize the necessity of keeping ethics and economies together in practical questions, however distinct they may be in the theoretical. Their divorce in business is fatal to every moral influence which civilization would encourage, because the liberty which has to be granted to all outside the ethical sphere would shelter the wrongs done under the permission of economics from all the reproaches and restraints of moral principles. That fact alone explains and attaches significance to a remark to the present writer by an economist, that, if we could only Christianize business, the moral and religious problems of the world would be much easier of solu

tion. The whole process of distribution and exchange is diametrically opposed in method and purposes to Christian ideas, or to the brotherhood of man. It is precisely what the doctrine of evolution represents the whole of life to be, a "struggle for existence," a victory for the strong, where moral character may be trampled down remorselessly by any one unscrupulous enough to take advantage of the restrictions it imposes upon another's conduct to reap for himself the fruits of superior power and cunning. It is a business in which the race is to the unscru pulous and the devil may take the hindmost, but in this case the devil usually gets the honest man.

But there is another more important fact which makes the argument still stronger. "Value," says Mr. Walker in his " Political Economy," "is a social phenomenon." It expresses the ratio between two terms of exchange, and so embodies the economic element of wealth. Wealth is, then, not a mere physical product. It is also social, and would not be what it is economically but for the relation it sustains to the wants of man, to supply and demand. But in its complex nature wealth consists of utility and value. Its utility is its intrinsic power to produce a given effect or to satisfy desire; its value may be entirely distinct from this, and expresses the amount in exchange which that utility may command. The utility, as in case of the air or water, where labor is not involved, may be obtained free, but its value never, except in charity. The value of wealth is proportioned, on the one hand, to the labor involved in it, and, on the other, to the intensity of desire. Value is thus purchasing power in exchange, and it increases with the ratio between population and natural resources. It is thus a phenomenon or fact inevitably and inseparably involved in the ethical and social relations of men, because it would have no existence except for society. In a life of absolute isolation and solitude only utility would exist. But wherever "two or three meet together" for trade or mutual protection, there value and ethical relations arise from the same facts. Value has no existence outside of this relation, and significantly enough it connects production as well as distribution with the ethical features of the problem, because it may be the joint result of the producer's work, the distributer's labor, and the consumer's necessities or desires. The whole case is well stated by J. S. Mill. "Political economy," he says, " does not treat of the production and distribution of wealth in all states of mankind, but only in what is termed the social state." If ethics and economics were

not the obverse and reverse sides of the same phenomena, this limitation of the economic field would not be true. But to make it a social science is to implicate it with ethics in precisely the same way in which politics is subordinate to it. Indeed, the true position regarding them is to consider economics a division of ethics in the wider sense.

The fact here maintained is reinforced by still stronger considerations. In undertaking to determine the laws regulating the production and distribution of wealth, of rent, interest, profits, wages, etc., economists assume that the principle or cause, effecting uniformity in these laws, is single and constant, namely, personal interest, and that no other need be taken into account. Every one knows what the charge has been against Ricardian economics, namely, that it assumed the utter selfishness of all men. But without putting it so strong as that, and without denying that it is too largely the fact, we point out the assumption that physical wants and desires are given so predominant an influence in the operation of economic causes, that they seem to be the only forces giving fixity and regularity to the laws of rent, profits, wages, interest, value, etc. In other words, interests are supposed to be the basis upon which the science as well as the art of political economy is to be built. Interests are supposed to be ĉonstant and an invariable factor of human nature. But the fact is that neither economic laws nor human desires have that sort of fixity or regularity of connections which is assumed for them. "Interests" are not the only springs of human conduct. Adam Smith, as we have indicated, long ago affirmed, almost in connection with his economic studies, that sympathy with others was also a powerful factor in men's action. This will modify their "interests," or set them aside. But even if mere "interest" is the spring with which we have to deal in determining the laws of economics, we cannot escape correlating the subject with ethics, because the latter sits as a judge over the conflict of personal interests, and will allow none of them to act unless consistent with moral laws. It therefore exercises a veto power over the unrestraining influence of the one force which economics depends upon for determining its laws, and thus indirectly, at least, affecting the form and matter of those economic laws. But, as said, man is not moved to action by "interest " alone. He is as powerfully influenced by justice, duty, sympathy, and social springs. These are purely ethical, and wherever they operate they affect the laws of economics. Value, interest, rent, wages, supply and demand,

may all be modified by them. The relations between men are not under the sole domination of motives without morals. The incidents of production and distribution are modified by them to such an extent often as to completely offset all the calculations based upon the mechanics and dynamics of personal interest. Rent, for instance, is defined as the difference between the highest and the lowest degree of fertility in land or natural resources, and increases with the growth of population. This is unquestionably true, where moral influences introduced by the will to equalize the conditions affected by "interest only do not enter into the result. But a socialistic state may equalize conditions so that the landholder must either labor, or share his receipts upon a more equitable basis with all the members of society. In other words, he can be made to submit to the same equalizing conditions as the accepted law of rent imposes upon the cultivator of natural resources. This is effected only by introducing the ethical factor at some point. Again, a conscientious man may diminish rent and put it below what the economic law calls for, in order to be just with his tenant. This is regulating or determining rent by a moral principle, justice instead of interest, and thereby making what is called an economic law an ethical law pure and simple. The same influence may be applied to modify interest, profits, wages, etc. A man who refuses to take usury and accepts a rate of interest lower than the economic conditions make possible, and a man who gives higher wages than competition would naturally produce, introduce a factor into values, profits, etc., as potent as any that comes from personal interest. The sense of duty, wherever it operates, produces its effect upon the incidents of economic forces; yea, is an economic force of equal importance with any other. But it is also an ethical force, and as "interests" cannot be assumed to be exempt from interference from other springs of action, and cannot be granted the legitimacy which seems to be implied by the independence of economics, and by the liberty it claims to pursue its objects without opposition from moral considerations, the law of duty comes in to determine what forces shall act to determine the laws of wealth. The results as formulated by the Ricardian system are purely hypothetical, being based upon the supposition that self-interest is the only motive to be reckoned with. Perhaps it is this neglect of the other factor which has prevented economics from being an exact science. Perhaps it cannot be an exact science because of the fluctuations of the human will between the motives of interest and duty, and would VOL. XV.- NO. 85.

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be such only when the spring was one or the other. But certainly the springs which determine economic laws are complex at times, although they may be simple and of the nature of self-interest in the majority of cases. Whether complex or simple, however, they do not escape a necessary connection with the ethical, and the economical cannot separate itself from them. If "interests are the sole motives with which economics directly deal, higher determinants of action come in by virtue of their right and power to regulate or suppress personal interest. On the other hand, if duty as a motive in economic action is granted a coördinate influence with "interest," it gives moral agencies as constitutive a place in economics as the physical instincts are supposed to have. In both cases we discover an inevitable connection, one direct and the other indirect, of ethics with economics. The two subjects, as sciences even, although more distinctly as arts, form such a solidarity of facts and forces that it is forced upon us to consider the two subjects as necessarily connected and in a large measure complementary of each other. This intromission of higher motives among the forces influencing what have hitherto passed as so-called economic results alone greatly modifies all conceptions usually taken of the subject, and we do not see how their importance can be ignored. They necessitate the correlation of ethical and economical problems, especially as the attempt to divorce them leads to immoral action under economical laws, so-called, and so connects the two sets of phenomena negatively. The connection should be positive. But positive or negative, it is a connection.

There are illustrations enough of the connection between economic laws and ethical springs to action, and often the conflict between what is called the economic law and the ethical law is so distinct as to make the former appear simply the immoral as contrasted with the moral. The sense of human brotherhood and the existing inequalities in economic conditions and trade are making this contrast felt until the tendency of the age, shown in the universal disputes and struggles between capital and labor, is to arraign the action of economical forces as immoral, and to set up an ethical principle as the proper regulator of their action. The meaning of this is evident. But the ethical relation involved in all economic conditions of production and distribution is well illustrated in an interesting description by John Ruskin of the way in which he acquired his patrimony. "My father and his partners," he says, "entered into what your correspondent mellif