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      Published by Good Press, 2019

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      EAN 4064066217358

Table of Contents

       LECTURE I. CAUSES THAT HAVE RETARDED THE PROGRESS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.

       LECTURE II. POLITICAL ECONOMY A MENTAL STUDY.

       LECTURE III. REASONS FOR TREATING POLITICAL ECONOMY AS A SCIENCE.

       LECTURE IV. THAT POLITICAL ECONOMY IS A POSITIVE, NOT AN HYPOTHETICAL SCIENCE.—DEFINITION OF WEALTH.

LECTURE I.

       CAUSES THAT HAVE RETARDED THE PROGRESS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.

       Table of Contents

      Political Economy, as a separate branch of study, may be said to be about a century old. Many of the facts which are its subject-matter, have indeed attracted human attention from the earliest times; many opinions, right or wrong, have been formed respecting them, and many customs and laws, beneficial or injurious, have been the consequence: but it was not until nearly the middle of the last century, that any attempt was made to reduce those opinions into a system, or to ascertain the grounds on which they were founded, or even how far they were reconcilable with one another. To M. Quesnay belongs the honour of having first endeavoured to explain of what wealth consists, by what means it is produced, increased, and diminished, and according to what laws distributed; in other words, of having been the first teacher of Political Economy. In the course of his investigations, he found that in the pursuit of wealth all governments had not merely mistaken the straight road, but had frequently pursued a path leading directly away from it. He found that instead of endeavouring to attain a beneficial end by appropriate measures, they had been aiming at a useless result by means totally ineffectual. Until his time it had been supposed that wealth consists of gold and silver, and that the quantity of gold and silver in any given country is to be increased by encouraging the exportation and discouraging the importation of all other commodities, and by the perpetual interference of governments in the modes in which the labour of their subjects is exerted, and the objects to which it is directed. Quesnay showed that gold and silver make the smallest and least important portion of the wealth of a country. And he showed that the abundance of gold and silver, and of every other commodity, is to be promoted, not by restrictions on importation, nor by bounties on exportation, but by the absolute freedom of external and internal trade; by securing to every man the results of his industry or frugality, without attempting to order him what to produce or how to enjoy.

      His inquiries seem to have produced on his own mind, and on the minds of his disciples, effects resembling those which would be created by the discovery of a map by a party who had been long wandering in an imperfectly known country. His map, indeed, was often inaccurate, but the points in which it was correct were the most important, and its errors, such as they were, were not detected by those to whom he offered it. Few men have ever presented to the human mind a more interesting subject of inquiry, and few have had a more devoted band of disciples. La Riviere, Mirabeau, Turgot, and the other writers forming the school called the French Economists, all implicitly adopted Quesnay’s opinions, and engaged zealously in their propagation.

      The inquiry which Quesnay originated was pursued, and with still greater success, by Adam Smith. Smith was superior to Quesnay, and perhaps to every writer since the times of Aristotle, in the extent and accuracy of his knowledge. He was, on the whole, as original a thinker as Quesnay, without being equally subject to the common defect of original thinkers, a tendency to push his favourite theories to extremes; and in the far greater freedom then allowed to industry in Great Britain than in France, and in the greater publicity with us of the government receipt and expenditure, he possessed far greater advantages as an observer. With these high qualifications and favourable opportunities, and assisted by a style unequalled in its attractiveness, he has almost completely superseded the labours of his predecessors. The few who read their writings, read them not in the hope of obtaining the instruction which they were intended to afford, but as sources of historical information, or as examples of the errors to which powerful minds may be subject in the infancy of a study.

      From the appearance of the “Wealth of Nations,” Political Economy has excited a constantly increasing interest. All the events, fortunate and unfortunate, which have occurred in Europe during that extraordinary period, have tended both to increase its actual importance, and to occasion that importance to be better estimated. The art to which it is principally applicable is the great art of government, and particularly that branch of government which consists in the raising and employment of public money. Not a tax can be imposed or applied without materially affecting the fortunes of those by whom it is paid, of those among whom it is expended, and of third persons, many of whom, perhaps, are unaware of its existence. To ascertain the character and the extent of these effects, even as to any existing tax, without the aid of the general principles supplied by Political Economy, is scarcely practicable: to foretell or even to conjecture, with probability, the effects of an untried tax, without such aid, is impossible. A government ignorant of the nature of wealth, or of the laws which regulate its production and distribution, resembles a surgeon who has not studied anatomy, or a judge unacquainted with law.

      But, under the old system of Continental Europe, many things concurred to diminish the attention which the evil consequences of this ignorance might have been expected to attract. Each monarchy was considered the patrimony of its king, and its public revenue a portion of his income. All that he could get he spent or gave away; part of it went in wars for his honour, part was wasted in building and pageantry, and part was distributed among his courtiers. Public debts were few and small, and were the debts, not of the nation, but of the crown. The interest was not an additional burden on the people, but a deduction from the gratifications of the prince, and was reduced from time to time, either by depreciating the currency, or by the simple expedient of a refusal to pay. No right was recognised in the public to inquire into the amount of the royal revenue, the sources from which it was derived, or the purposes to which it was applied. These were the private affairs of the sovereign, which it was not decent or even safe to canvass.

      All this was changed at once by the French Revolution. It was proclaimed in France, and admitted, or scarcely denied, on the rest of the Continent, that governments are made for nations, not nations for governments; and that the public revenue is the revenue, not of the government, but of the nation—not a property, but a trust—not a rent or a tribute, but the purchase-money of the labour necessary to prevent foreign and domestic violence and fraud, paid over to the government merely as an administrator, unlawfully employed if applied to any other purpose, and unlawfully demanded if more than necessary for that purpose.

      Every man felt himself interested that the proportion of his income which he had to pay over to the state should be reduced, either by diminishing expenditure, or by varying the mode of assessment.

      At the same time the wars in which Europe was involved for a quarter of a century, and the scale on which they were carried on, occasioned in almost every country an enormous increase of that proportion of the whole income of the people which is administered by the government. Almost every country created a national debt, and thus threw on its rulers the additional duty of collecting a revenue, to be applied, not for current expenses, but to repay those who had advanced