A History of Economic Doctrines from the time of the physiocrats to the present day. Charles Gide
such thing as political economy.” Fourteen years afterwards, in 1803, appeared Le Traité d’Économie politique. The book met with immediate success, and a second edition would have appeared had not the First Consul interdicted it. Say had refused to support the Consul’s financial recommendations, and the writer, in addition to having his book proscribed, found himself banished from the Tribunate. Say waited until 1814 before republishing it. New editions rapidly followed, in 1817, 1819, and 1826. The treatise was translated into several languages. Say’s authority gradually extended itself; his reputation became European; and by these means the ideas of Adam Smith, clarified and logically arranged in the form of general principles from which conclusions could be easily deduced, gradually captivated the more enlightened section of public opinion.
It would, however, be unjust to regard Say as a mere populariser of Smith’s ideas. With praiseworthy modesty, he has never attempted to conceal all that he owed to the master. The master’s name is mentioned in almost every line, but he never remains content with a mere repetition of his ideas. These are carefully reconsidered and reviewed with discrimination. He develops some of them and emphasises others. Amid the devious paths pursued by Smith, the French economist chooses that which most directly leads to the desired end. This path is so clearly outlined for his successors that “wayfaring men, though fools, could not err therein.” In a sense he may be said to have filtered the ideas of the master, or to have toned his doctrines with the proper tints. He thus imparted to French political economy its distinctive character as distinguished from English political economy, to which at about the same time Malthus and Ricardo were to give an entirely new orientation. What interests us more than his borrowing is the personal share which he has in the work, an estimate of which we must now attempt.
(1) In the first place, Say succeeded in overthrowing the work of the Physiocrats.
The work of demolition was not altogether useless. In France there were many who still clung to the “sect.” Even Germain Garnier, Smith’s translator, considered the arguments of the Physiocrats theoretically irrefutable. The superiority of the Scotch economist was entirely in the realm of practice.[257] “We may,” says he, “reject the Economistes’ theory [meaning the Physiocrats’] because it is less useful, although it is not altogether erroneous.” Smith himself, as we know, was never quite rid of this idea, for he recognised a special productiveness of land as a result of the co-operation of nature, and doctors, judges, advocates, and artists were regarded as unproductive. But Say’s admission was the last straw. Not in agriculture alone, but everywhere, “nature is forced to work along with man,”[258] and by the funds of nature was to be understood in future all the help that a nation draws directly from nature, be it the force of wind or rush of water.[259] As to the doctors, lawyers, etc., how are we to prove that they take no part in production? Garnier had already protested against their exclusion. Such services must no doubt be classed as immaterial products, but products none the less, seeing that they possess exchange value and are the outcome[260] of the co-operation of capital and industry. In other respects also—e.g., in the pleasure and utility which they yield—services are not very unlike commodities. Say’s doctrine meets with some opposition on this point, for the English economists were unwilling to consider a simple service as wealth because of its unendurable character, and the consequent fact that it could not be considered as adding to the aggregate amount of capital. But he soon wins over the majority of writers.[261] Finally Say, like Condillac, discovered a decisive argument against Physiocracy in the fact that the production of material objects does not imply their creation. Man never can create, but must be content with mere transformation of matter. Production is merely a creation of utilities, a furthering of that capacity of responding to our needs and of satisfying our wants which is possessed by commodities; and all work is productive which achieves this result, whether it be industry, commerce, or agriculture.[262] The Physiocratic distinction falls to the ground, and Say refutes what Smith, owing to his intimacy with his adversaries, had failed to disprove.
(2) On another point Say carries forward Smith’s ideas, although at the same time superseding them. He subjects the whole conception of political economy and the rôle of the economist to a most thorough examination.
We have already noticed that the conception of the “natural order” underwent considerable modification during the period which intervened between the writings of the Physiocrats and the appearance of the Wealth of Nations. The Physiocrats regarded the “order” as one that was to be realised, and the science of political economy as essentially normative. For Smith it was a self-realising order. This spontaneity of the economic world is analogous to the vitality of the human body, and is capable of triumphing over the artificial barriers which Governments may erect against its progress. Practical political economy is based upon a knowledge of the economic constitution of society, and its sole aim is to give advice to statesmen. According to Say, this definition concedes too much to practice. Political economy, as he thinks, is just the science of this “spontaneous economic constitution,” or, as he puts it in 1814, it is a study of the laws which govern wealth.[263] It is, as the title of his book suggests, simply an exposition of the production, distribution, and consumption of wealth. It must be distinguished from politics, with which it has been too frequently confused, and also from statistics, which is a simple description of particular facts and not a science of co-ordinate principles at all.
Political economy in Say’s hands became a purely theoretical and descriptive science. The rôle of the economist, like that of the savant, is not to give advice, but simply to observe, to analyse, and to describe. “He must be content to remain an impartial spectator,” he writes to Malthus in 1820. “What we owe to the public is to tell them how and why such and such a fact is the consequence of another. Whether the conclusion be welcomed or rejected, it is enough that the economist should have demonstrated its cause; but he must give no advice.”[264]
In this way Say broke with the long tradition which, stretching from the days of the Canonists and the Cameralists to those of the Mercantilists and the Physiocrats, had treated political economy as a practical art and a guide for statesmen and administrators. Smith had already tried to approach economic phenomena as a scientist, but there was always something of the reformer in his attitude. Say’s only desire was to be a mere student; the healing art had no attraction for him, and so he inaugurates the true scientific method. He, moreover, instituted a comparison between this science and physics rather than between it and natural history, and in this respect also he differed from Smith, for whom the social body was essentially a living thing. Without actually employing the term “social physics,” he continually suggests it by his repeated comparison with Newtonian physics. The principles of the science, like the laws of physics, are not the work of men. They are derived from the very nature of things. They are not established; they are discovered. They govern even legislators and princes, and one never violates them with impunity.[265] Like the laws of gravity, they are not confined within the frontiers of any one country, and the limits of State administration, which are all-important for the student of politics, are mere accidents for the economist.[266] Political economy is accordingly based on the model of an exact science, with laws that are universal. Like physics, it is not so much concerned with the accumulation of particular facts as with the formulation of a few general principles from which a chain of consequences of greater or smaller length may be drawn according to circumstances.
A delight in uniformity,[267] love of universality, and contempt for isolated facts, these are the marks of the savant. But the same qualities in men of less breadth of view may easily become deformed and result in faults of indifference or of dogmatism, or even contempt for all facts. And are these very faults not produced by the stress which he lays upon these principles? Was not political economy placed in a vulnerable position for the attacks of Sismondi, of List, of the Historical school, and of the Christian Socialists by this very work of Say? In his radical separation of politics and economics, in avoiding the “practical” leanings of Adam Smith, he has succeeded in giving the science a greater degree of harmony. But it also acquired a certain frigidity which his less gifted successors have mistaken for banality or crudity. Rightly or wrongly, the responsibility is ascribed to Say.
(3) We have just seen the influence which the progress of the physical sciences had upon