Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

Political Economy is not, as we have just said, a new science. It has been a distinct science only a short time. Until the eighteenth century, it was confounded with philosophy, morals, politics, law and history. But it does not follow, that, because it has grown so in importance, as to deserve a place of its own, its intimate relationship with the noble studies which had until then absorbed it should cease. There is another consequence also to be deduced from this. From the moment that Political Economy ceases to be considered a new science, it finds a long series of ancestors behind it, since it is compelled to investigate a past to which so many bonds unite it. This duty may increase its difficulties, but, at the same time, it singularly adds to the attractions of a study which, instead of presenting us only with the arid deductions of dogmatism, comes to us with all the freshness and all the color of life.

We may allow those who make Political Economy simply a piece of arithmetic to ignore these retrospective studies and their importance; for mathematics has little to do with history. But it is otherwise with the life of nations. These would discover whence they come, in order to learn whither they are tending.

They are not obeying a vain interest of curiosity, as J. B. Say supposed, when, in sketching a short history of the progress of Political Economy, he said: “However, every kind of history has a right to gratify curiosity.” It is a thing to be regretted, that this eminent thinker could thus ignore one of the essential elements of the science to which he rendered such great and unquestioned services. A sense for the historical was wanting in him. “The history of a science,” he writes,(25) “is not like the narration of things that have happened. What would it profit us to make a collection of absurd opinions, of decried doctrines which deserved to be decried? It would be at once useless and fastidious to thus exhume them in case we perfectly knew the public economy of social bodies. It can be of little concern to us to learn what our predecessors have dreamed about this subject, and to describe the long series of mistakes in practice which have retarded man’s progress in the research after truth. Error is a thing to be forgotten, not learned.” As if that which was once to be found in time is not to-day to be found in space; as if there ever was an institution that did not have its _raison d’ etre_ and had not constituted a resting place in the search after a higher truth or of a more intelligent and salutary application of an old one! There are a great many actual systems and a great many present facts which can be understood only by the help of history; and how frequently would not an acquaintance with history serve to keep us from taking for marvelous inventions the antiquated machinery of other ages, whose only advantage and only merit are that they have remained unknown. How much of the pretended daring of innovators has been old trumpery which the wisdom of the times had cast off as rubbish. Besides, as Bacon has said: “Verumtamen sæpe necessarium est, quod non est optimum.”

VII.

It is not the result of mere chance that the greatest economists have been both historians and philosophers. We need only mention Adam Smith, Turgot, Malthus, Sismondi, Droz, Rossi and Léon Faucher. It is too frequently forgotten that the father of modern Political Economy, Adam Smith, looked upon the science as only one part of the course of moral philosophy which he taught at Glasgow, and which embraced four divisions:

1. _Universal theology._—The existence and attributes of God; principles or faculties of the human mind, the basis of religion.

2. _Ethics._—Theory of the moral sentiments.

3. _Moral principles relating to justice._—In this, as we learn from one of Adam Smith’s pupils in a sketch preserved by David Stewart, he followed a plan which seems to have been suggested to him by Montesquieu. He endeavored to trace the successive advances of jurisprudence from the most barbarous times to the most polished. He carefully showed how the arts which minister to subsistence, and to the accumulation of property, act on laws and governments, and are productive of advances and changes in them analogous to those they experience themselves.

In the first part of his course, as we learn from the same authority, he examined the various political regulations not founded on the principle of justice but in expediency, the object of which is to increase the wealth, the power and the prosperity of the state. From this point of view, he considered the political institutions relating to commerce, finance, the ecclesiastical and military establishments. His lectures on the different subjects constitute the substance of the work he afterwards published on the wealth of nations. A pupil of Hutcheson, Adam Smith always applied the experimental method, “which, instead of losing itself in magnificent and hazardous speculations, attaches itself to certain and universal facts discovered to us by our own consciousness, by language, literature, history and society.”(26) Before taking the professorship of philosophy, Adam Smith had taught belleslettres and rhetoric in Edinburgh, in 1748. He had written a work on the origin and formation of languages; and it was because he had profoundly studied the moral sciences that it was given to him to inaugurate a new science and to become a great economist. Mr. Cousin has laid great stress on Adam Smith’s taste and talent for history. “Whatever the subject he treats, he turns his eyes backward over the road traversed before himself, and he illuminates every object on his path by the aid of the torch which reflection has placed in his hand. Thus, in Political Economy, his principles not only prepare the future but renew the past, and discover the reason, heretofore unknown, of ancient facts which history had gathered together without understanding them. It is not saying enough to remark that Adam Smith possessed a great variety of historical information; we must add that he possessed the real historical spirit.” Thanks to this eminent faculty of his, the Glasgow philosopher acquired great influence over minds. In 1810, when the French empire had reached the zenith of its greatness, Marwitz wrote: “There is a monarch as powerful as Napoleon: Adam Smith.” We need not recall Turgot’s historical researches.

Malthus’ chief title to distinction, his work on Population, is as much a historical work as a politico-economical one; and it is not sufficiently known that he was professor of history and Political Economy in the college of the East India Company at Aylesbury.

We need say no more on this subject. The works of the other writers whom we have mentioned are too well known to permit any one to think that they excluded history and moral science from the study of Political Economy. Hence the school which has risen up in Germany,(27) and which is endeavoring to do for Political Economy what Savigny, Eichhorn, Schrader, Mommsen, Rudorff, and so many other illustrious scholars have done for jurisprudence, cannot be rightly accused of rashness. It has done nothing but unfurl the noble banner borne by the most venerated masters of the science.

VIII.

At the head of this school stands William Roscher, professor of Political Economy at the University of Leipzig, whose excellent work, The Principles of Political Economy, in which he follows _the historical method_, we have just translated. William Roscher is (1857) scarcely forty years of age. He was born at Hanover, October 21, 1817. His laborious and simple life is that of a worthy representative of the science. “You ask me,” he wrote us recently, “to give you some information concerning the incidents of my life. I have, thank God, but very little to tell you. Lives whose history it is interesting to relate are seldom happy lives.” He confined himself to giving us a few dates which are, so to say, the landmarks of a career full of usefulness. Roscher, from 1835 to 1839, studied jurisprudence and philology at the universities of Göttingen and Berlin. The learned teachers who exercised the greatest influence on his intellectual development were the historians Gervinus and Ranke, the philologist K. O. Müller and the Germanist Albrecht. It is easy to see that he went to a good school, and that he profited by it. He was made doctor in 1838; admitted in 1840 as _Privat-docent_ at Göttingen; appointed in 1843 professor extraordinary at the same university, and called in 1844 to fill the chair of titular professor at Erlangen. Since 1848 he has acted in the same capacity in the University of Leipzig, where he was for six years member of the Poor Board, where he teaches also in the agricultural college. His fame has grown rapidly. Many of the German universities have emulated one another for the honor of possessing him, but he has not been willing to leave Leipzig. His first remarkable work was his doctor’s thesis: _De historicæ doctrinæ apud sophistas majores vestigiis_, written in 1838. In 1842, he published his excellent work, which has since become classical: “The Life, Labors and age of Thucydides.”(28) From that time, important works, all bearing the stamp of varied and profound scientific acquirements, and of an erudition remarkable for sagacity and elegance, have followed one another without interruption. In 1843, he treated the question of luxury(29) with a master hand, and laid the foundation of his great work—only the first part of which has thus far appeared—at the same time tracing on a large scale the programme of a course of Political Economy according to the historical method.(30) In 1844, he published his historical study on Socialism and Communism,(31) and in 1845 and 1846, his ideas on the politics and the statistics of systems of agriculture. He is, besides, author of an excellent work on the corn-trade;(32) of a remarkable book on the colonial system;(33) of a sketch on the three forms of the state;(34) of a memoir on the relations between Political Economy and classical antiquity;(35) of a work of the greatest interest, on the history of economic doctrines in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—a work full of the most curious researches;(36) of a book on the economic principle of forest economy,(37) and lastly, of the great work, the first part of which we have translated, under the title of The Principles of Political Economy, and which is to be completed by the successive publication of three other volumes, on the Political Economy of Agriculture, and the related branches of primitive production, the Political Economy of Industry and Commerce, and one on the Political Economy of the State and the Commune. This work, when completed, will be a real cyclopedia of the science.(38)

Side by side with William Roscher, we must mention a young economist, Knies, formerly professor at the University of Marburg, but whom political persecution compelled to accept a secondary position at the gymnasium of Schaffhausen, for a time, and who fills, to-day, in the University of Freiburg, in Breisgau, a position more worthy of his great talent. We hope, in a work which we intend to publish, on Political Economy in Germany, to make the public acquainted with the works of this writer. They deserve to attract the most serious attention. We know of few works which equal his Political Economy, written on the historical method.(39) We shall also have something to say of another economist, formerly professor at Marburg, a victim, also, of the power of the elector of Hesse, Hildebrand, now professor at the University of Zurich. His National-Œkonomie(40) is a book replete with interest, and we have nowhere met with a better criticism of Proudhon’s system, than in its pages. If the new school had produced but these three men, it would still have left its impress on the history of the science.

Other works, no less important, will claim our attention in the book to which we have already devoted many years of labor. If we carry out our intention, we shall review the works of a great many scholars, of great merit, whose names only are, unfortunately, known outside of Germany. The works of Rau, of Hermann, of Robert Mohl, of Hannsen, Helferich, Schütz, Kosegarten, Wirth etc., are a rich mine, from which we hope to draw much valuable information. Nor shall we neglect the original productions of J. Moser, the Franklin of Germany, nor the quaint, but sometimes striking, ideas of Adam Müller. Lastly, our learned friend, Professor Stein of Vienna, will afford us an opportunity to show forth the merit of important and extensive works, animated by the philosophic spirit. For the present, we must confine ourselves to a view of the application of the historical method to Political Economy.

There is a rather widespread prejudice existing against this order of works, a souvenir of the struggle carried on formerly, between Thibaut and Savigny, which inclines people to suppose that the historical school leans towards the political doctrines of the past, and that it is hostile to the liberal spirit of modern times. Nothing can be farther from the truth. The names of Roscher, Knies and Hildebrand are sufficient to remove this prejudice. Their works, inspired by an enlightened love for progress, do not allow of such a misconstruction. The historical point of view does not consist in the worship of the past, any more than in the depreciation of the present. It does not view the succession of phenomena as a fluctuation of events without unity or purpose. On the contrary, the historical method harmonizes wonderfully well with the wants of genuine progress. The changes accomplished bear testimony to the free and creative power of man, acting within the limit permitted to it by the degrees of intelligence reached, of the development of morals, and of individual liberty. The philosophy of Political Economy, which is the result of this calm teaching, free from the passions of party—for science acknowledges no adherence to party—is like that of law, opposed to the, more or less, ingenious or rash dreams, which build the world over again in thought. In showing how, at all times, humanity has understood and applied the principles which govern the production of wealth, it may say, with the Roman jurisconsult: “Justitiam namque colimus ... æquum ab iniquo separantes ... veram nisi fallor philosophiam, non simulatam affectantes.” “The human mind,” says Rossi, “endeavoring to attain to a knowledge of itself, estimating its strength, taking a method, and applying it with a consciousness of its mode of procedure to the knowledge of all things; such is philosophy. Without it, there is no science in any branch of human knowledge.” Thus do we rise, with the aid of a critical mind, by careful investigation and great sagacity, to the truths founded on observations made.

IX.

There is another method, which, starting out from principles, evident of themselves, develops science by way of conclusions drawn, after the manner of the geometricians. The apparent severity and simplicity of this method are very seductive, and very dangerous, when we have to deal not with figures, but with men; when the varied, complex and delicate exigencies which accumulate when human nature comes into play do not exactly square with the formula; and, when instead of dealing with abstractions, we have to tackle realities. One of our venerated teachers, the illustrious Rossi, thought he might remove the difficulty by drawing a distinction between _pure_ Political Economy and _applied_ Political Economy. It is not without a certain amount of hesitation that we dare differ with so high an authority; but confess we must, this distinction is far from satisfying us. The doubt it has left in our mind has been the principal cause which has inclined us to the historical method. “Rational Political Economy,” says Rossi, “is the science which investigates the nature, the causes and the movement of wealth, by basing itself on the general and constant facts of human nature, and of the external world. In applied Political Economy, the science is taken as the mean. Account is taken of external facts. Nationality, time and place play an important part.”

Let us for a moment accept these definitions; what is the consequence? That there are two sciences, the one of which, purely speculative, has more to do with philosophy than with the permanent conflicts which agitate the world; the other of which could not alone furnish us with rules in practice, nor with a formulary for the measures to be taken in a given case, since such a pretension would be both vain and ridiculous, but which would inform the practical judgment of men charged with the solution of the numberless difficult and complicated questions which come up every day. If pure science refuses to interfere in the affairs of this world; if, as the learned originator of the doctrine we are just now considering gives us to understand, it would compromise the solution of questions by the intoxication of logic, and the ambition of perfect system; if, consequently, it is to be worshipped like a motionless and inactive divinity, how could this platonic satisfaction suffice us? Would not the opponents of economic doctrines be disposed to acknowledge all the principles, provided the consequences to be drawn from them were left to themselves; and would they not come to us, bristling with arguments drawn from the circumstances of nationality, time and space, to refute the possibility of applying pure science?

On ne vaincra jamais les Romains que dans Rome.

This, therefore, is the ground we must explore. We must develop applied Political Economy which takes cognizance of external circumstances. To do this, no one will question that the best and most decisive of methods is the historical, which concerns itself with time, space and nationality, and which leads to proper reformation where reformation is wanted.

Moreover, principles will be no less firmly established by historical induction than by dogmatic deduction, and, moreover, science will be inseparable from art. We are not of those who deny principles, or who challenge them. What we desire is, that they should not be worshiped as fetiches, but that they should enter into the very life-blood of nations.

Further: the abstract deductions of pure science do not leave us without disquietude, since they treat man much more like a material than like a moral force. Under the vigorous procedure of speculative mathematics, man becomes a constant quantity for all times and all countries, whereas he is, in reality, a variable quantity. All the elements put in play are ideal entities, the reverse of which we find in poetry, where

Tout prend un corps, une ame, un esprit, un visage!

and where everything loses the character of life, and is transformed into inanimate units. Man is something different from the sum of the services he may be made to render, and from the sum of enjoyments which may be procured for him. We must not run the risk of lowering him to the level of a living tool; and from the moment that we are required to take his moral destiny into account, what becomes of abstract calculation?

X.

We have been wrong, says Rossi, in reproaching Quesnay for his famous _laissez faire, laissez passer_, which is pure science. We, also, are of opinion that the reproach was ill founded, for it proceeded from a wrong conception of the principle itself. But it seems to us that, far from condemning this doctrine in its serious application, the historical method may serve to explain and to justify it. Employing less of rigidity and dryness in form, it reaches consequences more in harmony with social life. But it is not to be imagined that we do not meet in this way with many ancient and glorious precedents. The great principles of industrial liberty, as well as those of commercial liberty, originated in France. Forbonnais was right when he said: “We may congratulate ourselves on being able to find, in our old books and ancient ordinances, wherewith to vindicate for ourselves the right to that light which we generally supposed to have been revealed to the English and Dutch before us.” The further Forbonnais carried his researches into our annals, the greater the number of traces of opposition to the prejudices in favor of exclusion and monopoly, so long made principles of administrative policy, did he find.(41)

The famous axiom, _laissez faire_, and _laissez passer_, the subversive tendencies of which people affect to condemn, was not invented by Quesnay. He only gave a scientific bearing to what was the inspiration of a merchant called Legendre. The latter, consulted by Colbert on the best means of protecting commerce, dropped these words which have since become so celebrated.

We must not lose sight of their real meaning, nor misunderstand the intention which dictated them. What Quesnay said was this: “Let everything alone which is injurious, neither to good morals, nor to liberty, nor to property, nor to personal security. Allow everything to be sold which has been produced without crime.” And he added: “Only freedom judges aright; only competition never sells too dear, and always pays a reasonable and legitimate price.” Far from being the absence of rule, liberty is the rule itself. To _laisser faire_ the good is to prevent evil.(42)

There is need of institutions to complete the exercise of the independence acquired by labor, and of laws to regulate that exercise. The _laisser faire_ and _laisser passer_ of economists is, in no way, like the absolute formula, which some have denounced and others sought to utilize, as relieving authority of all care and all intervention.

To understand this maxim aright, we must go back to the oppressive regime of ancient society. Quesnay’s formula was, first of all, a protest against the restraints which hampered the free development of labor. But it did not tend to abrogate the office of legislator, nor to deprive society or the individual of the support of the public power which watches over the fulfillment of our destiny.

It may have seemed convenient to find in the gravity of a politico-economical principle, an excuse for the sweets of legislative and administrative _far niente_, but it is generally conceded that the role of authority has grown, rather than diminished, under the regime of the liberty of labor. The task is, in our days, a hard one, both for individuals and nations; for liberty dispenses its favors only to the masculine virtues of a laborious and an enlightened people.

Liberty is not license. It refuses to bend under the yoke, but it submits to rule. The mission of authority is not to constrain, but to counsel; not to command, but to help accomplish; not to absorb individual activity, but to develop it. It does not pretend to raise a convenient indifference on the part of government, nor the indolent withdrawal of all protective influence to the dignity of a principle. To say, on the other hand, that the _laisser faire_ and _laisser passer_ of the economists means: Let robbery alone; let fraud alone etc., is to amuse one’s self playing upon words, and to argue in a manner unworthy of any serious answer. Under pretext of painting a picture of economic doctrine, we are given its caricature. Such has never been the system, to the elaboration of which the purest hearts and noblest intellects have devoted themselves. A negation does not constitute the science of Political Economy.

It is very convenient to inclose humanity within a circle of action, drawn with rigorous precision, and to govern movements seen in advance. But such artificial conceptions mutilate the activity of man. To guarantee man all liberty, and prevent its abuse—such are the data of the problem. The work is a great and difficult one. Far from yielding in point of elevation to ideal systems, it is superior to them in extent and variety of combinations. Those who ignore its bearing, yield, it may be, to a certain indolence of intellect. Restrained within its natural limits, the famous _laisser faire_ and _laisser passer_ of the Physiocrates deserves even to-day our respect and our confidence. It ought to be preserved in the grateful memory of men, side by side with the maxim which Quesnay succeeded in having printed at Versailles, by the hand of Louis XV himself: “Pauvres paysans, pauvre royaume; pauvre royaume, pauvre souverain.”(43)

XI.

To return to the question of method. Rossi made use of an ingenious example to explain his thought:(44) “Are,” he inquires, “these deductions [of pure science] perfectly legitimate; are these consequences always true? It is incontestably true that a projectile, discharged at a certain angle, will describe a certain curve; this is a mathematical truth. It is equally true, that the resistance offered to the projectile by the medium through which it moves modifies the speculative result in practice, to some extent; this is a truth of observation. Is the mathematical deduction false? By no means; but it supposes a vacuum. I hasten to acknowledge it. Speculative economy also neglects certain facts and leaves certain resistances out of account.” Now, from the moment that we have to deal with human interests, it is not possible to suppose a vacuum, to neglect the most vulgar facts, and the most common instances of resistance, nor to lose one’s self in abstraction. The correctives of applied Political Economy either may not wipe out this original sin, or else they run great danger of covering up the principles themselves. In ballistics, again, we may measure the resistance which the medium in which we are obliged to operate, makes the force of impulsion and the target both obey the same law, and yield to the same process of calculation. But is it thus when you touch upon man’s innermost and most sensitive part? Is there not danger that the hypotheses may be deceitful, and that you may be accused of toiling in a vacuum? We well know the solid reason that may be opposed to sarcasm of this nature; but is it expedient to lay one’s self open to it?

Moreover, the consequences are not great enough to warrant us to expose ourselves to the danger. The principles of pure science are very small in number. They might even, be easily reduced to one, of which M. Cousin has been the eloquent interpreter—human liberty. This liberty has no need of Political Economy to shine with the luster of evidence; nothing can prevail against it. We can prove that it is as fecund as it is respectable; but if the science of wealth should endeavor to demonstrate the contrary, the primordial bases of society, liberty, property and the family would not be less sacred nor less necessary, for they are the right of humanity. They could not be put aside, even under pretext of any mechanism which would claim to produce more.(45) These sovereign principles of economy flow from the moral law, and they have no reason to dread the power of facts, for the prosperity of nations depends on the respect with which they are surrounded and the guarantees by which they are protected.

We have spoken of the moral law; and, indeed, in our opinion, it is impossible to banish it from the domain of public economy. Any other point of view seems to us too narrow. And when we see eminent men go astray in the pursuit of an ideal which fails to take the human soul into account, and which finds nothing but equations where there are feelings and ideas, we cannot help thinking that they are unfaithful to the thought of the founder of the science, Adam Smith. Man is not simply a piece of machinery. He does not blindly submit to external impulse. Rather is he himself, the greatest of impulses. But to govern things, he must first learn to conquer himself. Personal interest is the powerful motive which he obeys. Man does not live alone, in a state of isolation, in the world. _Væ soli!_ He lives in society and profits by the relations which he forms with other beings, intelligent like himself, and for whom he has a natural feeling of sympathy.

The good that comes to them yields satisfaction to him, and the evil that befalls them falls on him likewise. He cannot turn back entirely upon his own personality. Besides his own interest, he feels and shares another interest—the interest of all. Personal interest is perfectly legitimate. The love of self cannot be condemned. The Savior himself has enjoined us to love our neighbor as ourselves. To love him more than ourselves is a very high and beautiful virtue. It is the self-abnegation which inspired Christian heroes. But heroism is rare, and cannot be imposed, nor taken, as a rule. Personal interest is a powerful stimulant, and the superior harmony of social relations makes it contribute to the general good.

What must be condemned is a fatal deviation of this sentiment which destroys its effect and narrows its actions. What we need to prevent is the degeneration of personal interest into an egotism which parches, instead of fertilizing, and which compromises the future by the exclusive search after present advantage; for egotism is short-sighted. On the other hand, the broader and more generous feeling which inclines us to sympathize with our fellow beings in their sorrows, and to unite our destiny to theirs; that is, the feeling of the general interest, has a limit too.

It would be falsified if it absorbed the individual; if it destroyed the most powerful motive-force by drying up the abundant source of activity; if it attacked moral energy by enervating responsibility; if it extended the circle of results obtained to such an extent that scarcely any one should feel the rebound.

The evil produced by egotism, that sad travesty of personal interest, appears under a form quite as formidable when the general interest takes the form of communism. The coöperation of personal interest and of the general interest is always necessary, both for individual profit and social advantage. There is as much danger in annihilating the individual as in exalting him. History furnishes us with memorable examples of this. It does not allow us to go astray in the narrow ways of a peevish and jealous personality, nor to lose ourselves in the vague labyrinth of a chimerical and false communism. The latter would destroy what constitutes the power and dignity of man. It would wipe out the most prominent features of his noble nature, by destroying the support of energy and activity and the food of moral force.

XII.

But, we are told, Political Economy is only the science of selfishness; Adam Smith is the prophet of individualism; grow rich _per fas et nefas_ is its ultimate teaching. Such a judgment is evidence of much levity and little enlightenment. How could the man who conceived the study of human interests on so large a scale, the philosopher who acknowledged Hutcheson as his master and gave his ideas a still more expansive character, be the apostle of egotism; and how can the science which he founded be its gospel? There is here an error of fact and a defect of appreciation. Hutcheson had based moral philosophy on the feeling which, according to him, engendered all the other virtues, on benevolence, which is disinterested, busied with the welfare of others, with the public weal and the general interest. Adam Smith went further, and sought to base it on a still more energetic feeling, on sympathy.

The first sentence of his Theory of the Moral Sentiments, which is a full resumé of his theory, is as follows: “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.” And this is no empty declaration on his part. It is the thought which of all in his book is nearest to his heart; and hence he energetically assails those philosophers who look upon self-love and the refinements of self-love as the universal cause of all our sentiments, and seek to explain sympathy by self-love.

La Rochefoucauld, Mandeville and Helvetius never met with a more determined or energetic adversary. Nowhere have the sweet and amiable virtues, such as ingenuous condescension, indulgent humanity, and the respectable and severe virtues, such as disinterestedness and self-control which subject our movements to the requirements of the dignity of our nature, been better understood or interpreted. Adam Smith is the philosopher of sympathy.(46) His theory triumphs over the cowardly and shameful egotism which concentrates the moral life of the individual in himself, and separates it from the life of the human race of the _outré_ stoicism which refuses the aid of sentiment to reason.(47) According to him, the law of private morals is sympathy; the law of natural jurisprudence, justice; the law of the production of wealth, free labor. But while he defended this principle with energy, he did not become guilty of a real recantation by worshiping the idol he had just overthrown. He would have been culpable of the strangest of all contradictions if he had made the vice which he had just lacerated the very pivot of another part of his teaching.

We regret that this essay, which has already very much exceeded the limits we assigned it in the beginning, will not permit us to reproduce here Knies’ beautiful demonstration, in which he so learnedly and eloquently vindicates Adam Smith from this strange imputation, thereby placing Political Economy on its true basis, the basis of morals, by removing in a decisive way, all pretext of error and all means of subterfuge. This part is one of the best features in his most excellent work on “Political Economy, from the historical Point of View.” We shall return to this matter.

XIII.

What is there that political economists have not been charged with? They have been accused, above all, of a cold heartedness and cruelty, and the sentence passed on them has been resumed in these words: “Political Economy has no bowels!” Indeed, the representative of the science, who has been most attacked and who has been held up as a picture of impassible insensibility; on whom have been heaped the most bloody outrages, is Malthus. Let us hear him. He tells us in his work on Political Economy, that if a country had no other means to grow rich, except by seeking for success in the struggle with other countries, at the cost of a reduction of the wages of labor, he would unhesitatingly say: Away with such riches; that it is much to be desired that the working classes should be well remunerated, and this for a reason much more important than all the considerations relating to wealth; that is, the happiness of the great mass of society. And he goes on to say, that he knows nothing more detestable than the idea of knowingly condemning the laboring classes to cover themselves with rags, to lodge in wretched huts, to enable us to sell a few more stuffs and calicoes to foreign countries. Certain it is, that no defender, however determined, of the laboring classes, has said anything stronger or more deeply felt. The reason is, that nothing was more foreign to Malthus’ ideas than the systematic rigidity of mathematical theories of wealth; that, a minister of the Gospel, he had meditated on its high precepts. His whole doctrine is based on the moral idea. “He was profoundly convinced that there are principles in Political Economy which are true only in as far as they are restricted within certain limits. He saw the principal difficulty of the science in the frequent combination of complicated causes, in the action and reaction of causes on one another, and in the necessity of setting limits or making exceptions to a great number of important propositions.” Here we are ever brought back to the undulating ground of living science, instead of having to follow the rectilineal way traced out by the dead letter. We are always driven back, whatever may be pretended to the contrary, to the realities of which history alone possesses the secret. The idea of wealth cannot absorb everything when there is question of judging and enlightening men. To do this, it is necessary to know the various phases of social housekeeping, what nations have thought of economic interests which have never ceased to interest them greatly, what they have attempted and what they have attained.

Hence, we must turn over the leaves of the book of the past, and study its economic aspect, as we have studied its political and literary aspect. We must follow living nations through their divers periods of development, and fathom the causes of the destruction of those that are dead. When we are dealing with the comparative study of the economic destinies of nations, our investigations are limited to a small number of individual nations—a further reason not to omit any, and above all, to scrutinize, as an anatomist would with his scalpel, the principle of life of those which are no more. We may, by accounting to ourselves for the immense variety of phenomena which are brought to light by the _application_ of principles to facts, and in which nothing is absolute or permanent, in which, on the contrary, everything is relative and successive, acquire that sureness of touch and correctness of vision which are among the most valuable conquests of science.

It would be a mistake to suppose that theory simplifies practical solutions. Far from providing us with a sort of formulary, it teaches us to put our finger on a number of difficulties. It brings to the surface the many aspects and fertile and varied considerations, the examination of which is the mission of the real statesman and legislator. In this way, the action of thought and the power of the moral idea are revealed with most _éclat_. Man ceases to be an inert element, and manifests himself as a sensible being, and the sublime thought of Pascal: “Humanity is like one man who lives and learns always,” is verified by the result. The wish to violently abdicate the past, it would be vain and rash to attempt to realize. The lessons it transmits to us are as instructive as the picture it unrolls before our eyes is attractive. We have no longer but to see and hear, to be cured of the most generous impatience with what is, and to retreat from the most perilous attempts.

XIV.

The unvarying testimony of ages affirms the continued and gradual amelioration of man by individual energy and moral thought.(48) Want and suffering have urged him forward. Foresight, labor, sacrifice and virtue have in part redeemed him. No right has been lessened or usurped, and every step in civilization has been a step in the way of freedom. Instead of making the latter responsible for a material and moral wretchedness which it is called upon to cure, we may prove, that, in proportion as real liberty and legal guarantees increase, evil diminishes.

We do not desire to yield to a convenient optimism, and deny the sufferings which weigh only too heavily on the world. We are far from having reached the end assigned to our efforts; but let not the hope we entertain of further progress blind us to that which has already been accomplished. This latter shows us that we are on the right road, and that we have not done unwisely in giving free rein to the human faculties. Sudden changes are made only in theaters. In the real world, the march of progress is slow and laborious. It may be accelerated by a happy hit; but it would be vain to try to hurry it.

Man still suffers. No one desires to deny the evil, but only to estimate its extent. Yet it cannot be gainsaid that its fatal empire is narrowing instead of enlarging. Especially is it the progress accomplished in the higher regions of intellect and of the feelings which here exerts its beneficent influence. On our moral greatness depends our material power. The elevation or debasement of character, the energy or debility of the will—such is the first source of good or evil. The world, a Chalmers rightly says, is so constituted that we should be materially happy if we were morally good.

Industrial progress helps, we have said, towards moral perfection. It is not the source of that perfection, but its instrument; for ignorance and misery, its habitual attendants, are poor advisers. Political Economy shows how the goods of this world are multiplied. It shows how modest comfort may become more and more general, and thus an impetus be given to all noble virtues without awakening a blind passion for riches. It teaches moderation instead of exciting covetousness, nor does it come in conflict with the sublime words of Saint Augustine: “The family of men, living by faith, use the goods of the earth as strangers here, not to be captivated by them or turned away by them from the goal to which they tend, which is God, but to find in them a support which, far from aggravating, lightens the burthen of this perishable body which weighs down the soul.”

XV.

Looked at from below, all things diverge. Looked at from above, all things run into one another and combine with one another. It is one of the great merits of the historical method, that it raises the point of observation and gives the observer the support of tradition and good sense, that master of life; that it prevents a divorce between different branches of knowledge of the same order, which constitute but one intellectual family, which there is no question of confounding, and which it would be dangerous to isolate.

Aristotle, that universal genius, had discovered Political Economy, and it was the historical method which revealed it to him. Be it added, that the great philosopher had seen but one phase of the science, chrematistics, and that his ideas here bear the impress of the age in which he lived. Aristotle, however, distinguished this science from all others and from domestic economy, which is so akin to it. Doubtless, he did not found the modern study of Political Economy, but his powerful intellect gave him a presentiment of it.

The honor of producing at once, Adam Smith, Quesnay and Turgot belongs to the eighteenth century. It was in the course of philosophy at Glasgow that this study found a definite place. The illustrious founder of the science of Political Economy did not contemplate dissolving the ancient alliance between it and the moral sciences, history, philosophy, jurisprudence, belles-lettres—all of which he had explored and studied profoundly. Let those whose ambition it is to walk, even at a distance, in the footsteps of Adam Smith, not forget what was the cradle of the noble study to which they have devoted their intellects.

L. WOLOWSKI.