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objects have been strictly limited and clearly defined; that is to say, in proportion as science has become "fragmentary."

But, passing by popular objections, it cannot be denied that the limitation of Political Economy to the single subject of wealth has been objected to by some economists of reputation and authority, who have, accordingly, in their treatment of the science, extended the range of its inquiries; embracing in the same discussion, in addition to the laws of wealth, everything which affects the well-being of society. The objections to this course appear to me to be fundamental and insuperable.

In the first place, the great variety of interests and considerations included under the expression " social well-being" would seem to render the comprehension of them in one system of doctrines difficult, if not impracticable. But the fundamental defect in this mode of treatment-in the attempt to combine in the the same discussion the laws of wealth and the laws of society-consists in this, that even where the subjectmatter of the two inquiries is identical, even where the facts which they consider are the same, yet the relations and aspects under which these facts are viewed are essentially different. The same things, the same persons, the same actions are discussed with reference to a different object, and, therefore, require to be classified on a different principle.

If our object, for example, were to discover the laws of the production and distribution of wealth, those

instruments of production, the productiveness of which depends on the same conditions, and those persons whose share in the products of industry is governed by the same principles, should, respectively, be placed in the same categories; while, if our object were the larger one of social interests and relations generally, we might require a very different arrangement. Thus superior mental power, regarded with a view to the production of wealth, is an instrument of production perfectly analogous to superior fertility of soil; they are both monopolized natural agents; and the share which their owners obtain in the wealth which they contribute to produce, is regulated by precisely the same principles. Men of genius, therefore, and country gentlemen, however little else they may have in common, yet being both proprietors of monopolized natural agents, would in an inquiry into the laws of wealth be properly placed in the same class. In the same way, the wages of a day labourer and the salary of a minister of state depend on the same principle— the demand for and supply of their services; and these persons, therefore, so widely different in their social position and importance, would be included by the economist in the same category. On the other hand, farmers and landlords, who, with a view to social inquiries, would probably be ranked together as belonging to the agricultural interest, would, if our object were the narrow one of the discovery of the laws of wealth, be properly placed in different classes : the income of the farmer depending on the laws

which regulate the rate of profit, while that of the landlord depends on the laws which regulate rent; those laws being not only not the same, but generally varying in opposite directions.

M. Say is, perhaps, the most distinguished of those writers who have treated Political Economy as the science of society, and nowhere are the inconveniences of this method 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 book without perceiving (and the same remark may be made with respect to most of the French writers on Political Economy with whose works I am conversant) 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 wealththat questions respecting the distribution of wealth are constantly confounded with the wholly different questions which the justification upon social grounds of existing institutions involves; and thus problems purely economic, come, under his treatment of them, to be complicated with considerations which are entirely foreign to their solution.

Thus he tells us* that rent, interest, and wages are

* Vol. 1, pp. 213 and 215.

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. 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

M. Say, it is true, in another part of his work, vol. 2, 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.

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 and horror, and the like; the result, of course, being that their inquiries led to nothing but fanciful theorizing and verbal quibbling.

*

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 foundation of society with the economic laws of wealth, seems almost inevitably to lead. The writer who thus treats Political Economy, labours under a constant temptation to wander from those ideas which are strictly appropriate to his subject into considerations of equity and expediency which are

* 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."

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