stated with admirable fullness and clearness in the introductory essays of Mr. Mill and Mr. Senior. I may, however, mention an incidental advantage which arises from this way of regarding the study, which I am not aware that they have noticed.

It is scarcely to be expected, as I have already remarked, that discussions which have so direct a bearing upon questions of conduct in some of the most important duties of life as those of Political Economy, should ever be carried on with the same pure and disinterested regard to truth as discussions in mathematics or astronomy, in which no human interests are immediately concerned; but, if we would approximate to that desirable state of feeling, certainly our wisest course is to keep the discussion of the general principles of the science completely clear from the advocacy of the particular practical measures which may be founded upon them. Those who have not yet addressed themselves to the study of Political Economy will be more likely to do so, and to do so with candour and impartiality, if they feel that, whatever be the conclusions at which they may arrive, these will not necessarily commit them to any positive political course; that, having satisfied themselves as to the general law, it will still remain open to them to consider the expediency of its application in any given contingency.

I believe too that, even with a view to making converts to practical measures, it is the more expedient course to keep distinct the discussion of general

principles from the question of the propriety of their practical application. The dispassionate attention of the objector being once secured, and the truth being ascertained with reference to the abstract principle, his opposition will, if founded upon mere prejudice, at once disappear; on the other hand, if it rest upon solid considerations, the grounds of it will at least be narrowed-we shall have fixed the precise point upon which the objection turns, which is certainly the most important condition towards its removal.

Again, by drawing the line broadly between theory and practice, this further advantage is gained: Political Economy ceases to be burdened with the various schemes and nostrums, financial and political, of its adherents, the confounding of which with the conclusions of the science has, I think, hitherto tended much to check its progress and to prejudice it unfairly in the eyes of the public.

There is no reason whatever that a political economist should dogmatize on questions of general politics, or even on those which arise in the more limited field of taxation and finance. There is no question of the kind which does not involve many other than purely economic considerations-considerations of time, of place, of convenience, of morality, perhaps of public faith. Even such questions as those connected with the maintenance of a public debt, or the imposition of an income tax, cannot be satisfactorily discussed without taking into account, in the one case, the reciprocal obligations of successive generations, in the

other, the effect of such impositions upon public morality, points with respect to which the most profound knowledge of the principles of the production and distribution of wealth affords no security against

error.

For these reasons it appears plainly desirable that a clear severance should be made between the measures which may be advocated by economists, and the doctrines of the science which they teach; in other words that Political Economy should be treated as a science and not as an art.

I need scarcely add that it is not by this intended that a political economist should be precluded from pointing, when he sees occasion, to the practical applications of his doctrines. All that is desired is that he should distinguish between such applications and the principles of the science; that the discussion of the laws of the production and distribution of wealth should not be encumbered with the necessity of defending or refuting measures, the propriety of which must often be determined by other than purely economic considerations.

LECTURE II.

OF THE MENTAL AND PHYSICAL PREMISES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, AND OF THE LOGICAL CHARACTER OF THE DOCTRINES THENCE DEDUCED.

IN my last lecture I stated that, according to the best English authorities, Political Economy is defined as "the science which states the laws regulating the production and distribution of wealth, so far as they depend on the action of the human mind." I also observed that, while agreeing substantially in the views, as regards the nature and limits of the science, of those who propounded this definition, yet the language of the definition did not appear to me correctly to represent those views. I therefore ventured to propose a change of phraseology, and offered two definitions, either of which appeared to me to fulfil the necessary requirements. These definitions were as follows, viz.," the science, which, accepting as ultimate facts the principles of human nature, and the physical laws of external nature, investigates the laws of the production and distribution of wealth which result from their combined operation;" or this "the science which traces the phenomena of the production and

distribution of wealth up to their causes, in the principles of human nature and the laws and events of the external world." The points in which the received definition and either of those which I proposed agree, were then stated and illustrated at some length. It remains now that I should advert to the points in which they differ, and state the grounds on which the proposed change is to be vindicated.

According to the received definition, then, Political Economy is represented as being conversant with the laws of the production and distribution of wealth, so far forth only as these laws "depend on the action of the human mind;" and, its business being thus restricted to the tracing of the operation of mental laws, to the exclusion of physical, it is represented as a purely mental or moral science. I have altered this part of the definition, because I conceive that the province of Political Economy is not so narrow as this language represents it; no economists, not even the authors of the definition in question, having ever yet been content to confine their investigations within the limits here prescribed. It appears to me, on the contrary, that the laws and phenomena of wealth, which it belongs to Political Economy to explain, depend equally on physical as on mental laws, that Political Economy stands in precisely the same relation to physical as to mental nature, and that, if it is to be ranked in either of these departments of speculation, it is as well entitled to be placed in the one as in the other.