Page images
PDF
EPUB

As I have said, M. Say is one of those writers who have treated Political Economy as having this larger scope, and nowhere are the inconveniences of the method he pursues more distinctly brought into view than in his valuable treatise: indeed it appears to me that most of the errors into which, notwithstanding the general merits of his work, he has fallen, are to be traced to this source. No one, I think, can peruse much of his writings without perceiving (and the same remark may be made of not a few French writers on Political Economy, and in particular of M. Bastiat) that his reasoning on economic problems is throughout carried on with a side glance at the prevalent socialistic doctrines. An inevitable consequence of this is his object being quite as much to defend society and property against the attacks of their enemies as to elucidate the theory of wealth-that questions respecting the distribution of wealth are constantly confounded with the wholly different questions which the justification social grounds of existing institutions involves ;

upon

attains its minimum. 2. Rent and profit stand in different relations to price: e.g., a rise of agricultural prices, if permanent, would imply, other things being the same, a rise of rent, but it would not imply or be attended with a rise of agricultural profits; on the contrary, agricultural profits, and profits generally, would most probably fall as a consequence of a rise in agricultural prices. 3. A tax on the profits of any particular branch of industry would raise prices in that industry; the receivers of profits would be thus enabled to transfer the burden of the tax to the consumers of the commodities they produce. A tax on rent would have no corresponding effect on agricultural prices, and would rest definitively on the owners of the soil. 4. Variations in rents are slow, and, as a rule, in an upward direction; in profits, still more in interest, variations are frequent and rapid, and not in any constant direction.

and thus problems purely economic, come, under his treatment of them, to be complicated with considerations which are entirely foreign to their solution.

2

Thus he tells us1 that rent, interest, and wages are all perfectly analogous; each giving the measure of utility which the productive agency (of which each respectively is the reward) subserves in production. Rent, according to this theory, does not depend on the different costs at which, owing to the physical qualities of the soil, agricultural produce is raised, nor profit on the cost of labour, nor wages on demand and supply, but each on the utility of the functions which land, capital, and labour respectively perform in the creation of the ultimate product. Thus the distinct economic laws which regulate the distribution of wealth amongst the proprietors of these three productive agencies are confounded, in order to introduce a moral argument in defence of the existing structure of society, and to place the three classes of landlords, capitalists, and labourers on the same footing of social convenience and equity.

Dr. Whewell, in examining the cause of the failure of physical philosophy in the hands of the ancient Greeks, finds it in the circumstance that they introduced into their physical speculations ideas inappropriate to the facts which they endeavoured to solve.

1 'Cours Complet,' tom. i. pp. 213-215.

2 M. Say, it is true, in another part of his work (vol. ii. p. 45), states the law of wages correctly as depending on demand and supply, but the doctrine alluded to in the text is no less distinctly stated. The doctrines are, no doubt, irreconcilable; but with this I am not concerned.

It was not, he tells us, as is commonly supposed, that they undervalued the importance of facts; for it appears that Aristotle collected facts in abundance; nor yet that there was any dearth of ideas by which to generalize the facts which they accumulated; but that, instead of steadily and exclusively fixing their attention on the purely physical ideas of force and pressure, they sought to account for external phenomena by resorting to moral considerations-to the ideas of strange and common, natural and unnatural, sympathy, horror, and the like-the result, of course, being that their inquiries led to nothing but fanciful theorizing and verbal quibbling.1

Now the introduction into economic discussions of such considerations as those to which I have adverted in the example given from M. Say, appears to me to be an error of precisely the same kind as that which was committed by the ancient Greeks in their physical speculations, and one to which the method adopted by M. Say, of embracing in the same discussion the principles and ends of social union with the economic laws of wealth, seems almost inevitably to lead. The writer who thus treats Political Economy, labours

1 Sir John Herschel's explanation of the failure is substantially the same. "Aristotle," he says, "at least saw the necessity of having recourse to nature for something like principles of physical science; and, as an observer, a collector, and recorder of facts and phenomena, stood without an equal in his age. It was the fault of that age, and of the perverse and flimsy style of verbal disputation which had infected all learning, rather than his own, that he allowed himself to be contented with vague and loose notions drawn from general and vulgar observation, in place of seeking carefully, in well arranged and thoroughly considered instances, for the true laws of nature."

under a constant temptation to wander from those ideas which are strictly appropriate to his subject into considerations of equity and expediency which are proper only to the more extensive subject of society. Instead of addressing himself to the problem, according to what law certain facts result from certain principles, he proceeds to explain how the existence of the facts in question is consistent with social well-being and natural equity; and generally succeeds in deluding himself with the idea that he has solved an economic problem, when, in fact, he has only vindicated, or persuaded himself he has vindicated, a social arrangement.

The objections, therefore, to this method of treating Political Economy, resting as they do on the incompatible nature of the investigations which it seeks to combine, are fundamental. Even if it should be thought desirable to give the name of Political Economy to the larger inquiry, it would still be necessary to reserve for separate and distinct investigation the laws of the production and distribution of wealth.

§ 3. But, secondly, the ordinary definition represents Political Economy as a science; and (as I have elsewhere said) "for those who clearly apprehend what science, in the modern sense of the term, means, this ought sufficiently to indicate at once its province, and what it undertakes to do. Unfortunately, many who perfectly understand what science means when the word is employed with reference to physical nature, allow themselves to slide into a totally different sense

of it, or rather into acquiescence in an absence of all distinct meaning in its use, when they employ it with reference to social existence. In the minds of a large number of people everything is Social Science which proposes to deal with social facts, either in the way of remedying a grievance, or in promoting order and progress in society: everything is Political Economy which is in any way connected with the production, distribution, or consumption of wealth. Now I am anxious here to insist upon this fundamental point: whatever takes the form of a plan aiming at definite practical ends-it may be a measure for the diminution of pauperism, for the reform of land-tenure, for the extension of co-operative industry, for the regulation of the currency; or it may assume a more ambitious shape, and aim at reorganising society under spiritual and temporal powers, represented by a high priest of humanity and three bankers-it matters not what the proposal be, whether wide or narrow in its scope, severely judicious or wildly imprudent-if its object be to accomplish definite practical ends, then I say it has none of the characteristics of a science, and has no just claim to the name. Consider the case of any recognised physical science-Astronomy, Dynamics, Chemistry, Physiology-does any of these aim at definite practical ends? at modifying in a definite manner, it matters not how, the arrangement of things in the physical universe? Clearly not. In each case the object is, not to attain tangible results, not to prove any definite thesis, not to advocate any practical plan, but simply to give light, to reveal laws of

C

« PreviousContinue »