CLOSING WORDS.

240. Private and Public Purposes.-The habit of regarding certain objects or functions of the state as public, and others as relating only to private, interest is so strong in many minds, that they suppose it to be innate and self-evident that to tax a citizen to maintain a court-house is to tax him for a public purpose, but to tax him to maintain a factory is to tax him for a private purpose. Very likely such will say that in one case the money goes to the state, in the other it is paid over to a private individual.

The money raised by the state to build court-houses, maintain judges and sheriffs, and sustain the ordinary administration of justice, is paid in salaries to the judges and sheriffs, to be expended by them in the support of their families and the gratification of their individual wants. It is earned by them in the performance of their official duties, but it is paid to them as individuals, simply because the functions they perform are not selfsupporting-in short, are unprofitable industries in the economic sense (but are held to be socially desirable), and are therefore paid for. Hence, when the state takes money from the tax-payer A to pay to the judge, sheriff, or school-teacher B, it is taxing A to sustain B in an industry economically unprofitable, but socially desirable. What is a public purpose and what a private purpose varies with the social evolution of a state or tribe. In all the Catholic countries of Europe, wherein state and church are united, religion is a public purpose, and the education of youth a private purpose. In the United States education is a public purpose, and religion is chiefly a private purpose. A few centuries ago the right to punish murder was a private right, which belonged first to the deceased's relatives. Only when they waived their private right did the punishment of murder become a public purpose. In China the planting of trees, and protection of the people from river floods, is a public and imperial purpose. In the United States it is a private purpose. In Greece the Olympian, Isthmian, and Nemean games were a public purpose of the highest state importance. In America all amusements are a private purpose. In the middle ages the relief of the poor was a private purpose, except so far as the church was part of the state. In America poor relief is a public purpose in some states, and a private one in others, but is nowhere a function of the central government,

AFTER, THEREFORE FOR THIS CAUSE.

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It is conceivable that, in the infancy of society, hunting and fishing, and even the cultivation of the soil, if carried on by the commune or tribe, would be a public purpose. Certainly, in many of the more savage African tribes visited by Stanley in his first voyage down the Congo, and wherein no trade could be done except with the chief as representative of the tribe, trading and receiving presents were public purposes. But in civilized states both receiving presents and trading have ceased to be public purposes.

What is a public purpose and what a private varies, therefore, more or less, as between any two states and stages of development. But in all, the public purpose is that which the majority of numbers, wealth and force in society, decide shall be done by the state, and the private purpose covers all matters of choice, in which the individual is left untrammeled by the state. In a military age, when fighting was the chief occupation of the ruling classes, all taxation to maintain soldiers was a public purpose. But taxation to maintain a teacher would have been deemed very clearly for a private purpose. It is possible that as we advance industrially the military function may come to be performed wholly for hire, as the educational one comes to be absorbed by the state. Certainly, with each step in a nation's advance from the military toward the industrial state, it gives less attention to its armies and more to its industries.

241. Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc.-The class of economists who prefer the crude simplicities of dogmatic assumption to the often complex methods of historic proof are wont to meet all economic argument, based on a grouping together of economic causes and their consequences, by the apt phrase, “Post hoc, ergo propter hoc." The use of this phrase by free traders as a means of thwarting an argument for protection, founded on a coupling of protective policies with national prosperity, is constant, and seems to be regarded as efficient. In fact, as effects cannot well precede their causes, all argument from causes to effect, and, indeed, all logic and philosophy, are open to be met by this phrase with equal effect. At a given period after the moon is either in the zenith or the nadir of a given point on the earth's surface, the tides rise in the ocean at that point. Can the moon's influence over the tides be negatived by the simple sneer, "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc"? So of all other causes in science. The propter follows the post. An accurate statement of the nature of the historic method would be that "one adequate or conducing

cause having arisen immediately prior to the event, and no other adequate or conducing cause being shown, the event will be inferred to be due to the adequate or conducing causes actually shown to have preceded it, in preference to any assumptions of causes which are not shown to have existed, or which, if they existed, were not adequate, or, if existing and adequate, did not in fact conduce to the event, owing to the interception of their operation by other known events."

In the presence of adequate producing causes, no others being shown, the maxim, "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc," becomes the very form and substance of logic instead of a fallacy. Hence, in economic argument, the maxim does not of itself disclose or imply a fallacy in the argument, but presents only a buttress behind which the opposing advocate may plant himself while he presents the other adequate and conducing causes to whose operation he himself attributes the event. As a cover for such opposing statements it is valid. As an independent and self-sustaining objection, or as a substitute for the very proof it may properly introduce, it is entirely void.

The reader should also be admonished against the sophistry of assuming that simplicity and even beauty in the statement of a policy are to be mistaken for simplicity and beauty in its operation. A policy which may be extremely simple in its statement may be infinitely complex and painful in its operation. On the contrary, a policy which may be as full of entanglements in its statements, as a fort is of buttresses and ramparts, may be as delightfully direct and simple in its operation, as that fort is on an invading foe. Herod's decree, "Kill all the babes under two years of age"; Solomon's decree, "Divide the babe equally be tween the two women who claim to be its mother"; the Russian Czar's decree, "Build the railway from St. Petersburg to Moscow in the straight line between those cities as I now draw my pencil"; and the Compromise Tariff decree of 1833 in the United States, "Reduce the tariff 10 per cent. each alternate year until it stands at 20 per cent. all round," were models of simplicity in their statement, but of complicated barbarity and multifarious torture in their operation.

But time would not avail to caution the student against the multifarious forms which fallacy may assume. Fallacy, like fraud, defies accurate definition in advance by wearing a new coat every time it appears. Hence it is that economic works, however ample, truthful, and explicit may be their contents

BOOKS CAN NOT MAKE ECONOMISTS.

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and very few of them are either ample, truthful, or explicitcan never brace the student certainly and finally against error. They are useful in cultivating the habit of detecting error, but in their use there must arise the new men who are wiser than the old books, and who are as the new wine that can not be held in the old bottles. Such men will see in each exigency, as it shall arise, the facts which distinguish it from all preceding cases, and will detect in advance that right way which books can only point out after it has been trod. These pioneers in industry and in legislation are the actual economists, who stand in a like relation to the science, as the great lawyers do to the law. They absorb its past learning, but they mold its future quality. So, after economists have written, and all that books can teach has been said, it remains that political economy, or the science of man in society, is a part of the process of the continual radiation of new truth by new minds. It comes by perpetually renewed inspiration. As held by the best instructed minds, it will not be identical with the instruction they received. Its latest life will always have found its suggestion, but never its exact form, in books. It cannot cease to be a process of emanation or of evolution. To this extent, as Dr. Henry C. Carey was wont to say, political economists can make books, but books can never make political economists. It must be in the man. So must all art, power, inspiration, and success. But not in one man absolutely. All men know more than one man. The highest school of economic thought must always be the aggregated consensus of opinion of the world's best business men, producers, workers, whom, as forces, the statesmen and instructed thinkers marshall and generalize. The writer has tried to bring this book abreast of the moving host, to tune it to the living pulses of the active world. If he has succeeded, he has caught the impress of the marching host, their flying banners, and their fervid cause, for a moment. That moment past, the economists of the future in their march sweep by, and again raise life above the book. These real economists include those who conduct the world's industries and legislation, rather than those who instruct in this particular art. The claim to be endowed with the gift of prophecy as to future economic developments, often springs from being out of sorts with existing economic conditions. Those who adapt themselves, with most facility and tact, to the demands of their environment, can usually see as far, or farther, ahead than the unsuccessful. Economic philosophy is yet in its nascent and

plastic state. It is born, but it is only beginning to grow. The science will proceed according to its inward law, and will have its own mode of growth. It will be a factor in the world's progress as momentous as could be wished. But it must bide its time. Its period of ascendency over mankind will not be that of its first youthful impulse, but of its sober second thought. At present the honest study of society, in its economic aspects, will tend to impart to its students a tone which may be defined thus: In observation, industry in generalization, modesty; in criticism, equity; in nationalism, harmony; in internationalism, purity; in cosmopolitanism, sincerity. By these signs ye shall know the true economists.

THE END.