Principles of Political Economy, Vol. 1
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Title: Principles of Political Economy, Vol. 1
Author: Wilhelm Roscher
Contributor: L. Wolowski
Translator: John J. Lalor
Release date: January 4, 2009 [eBook #27698]
Most recently updated: June 20, 2020
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27698
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, VOL. 1 ***
Principles Of Political Economy
By
William Roscher,
Professor of Political Economy at the University of Leipzig,
Corresponding Member of the Institute of France,
Privy Counsellor To His Majesty,
The King Of Saxony.
From the Thirteenth (1877) German Edition.
With Additional Chapters Furnished By The Author,
For This First English And American Edition,
On Paper Money, International Trade,
And The Protective System;
And A Preliminary Essay
On The Historical Method In Political Economy
(From the French)
By
L. Wolowski
The Whole Translated By
John J. Lalor, A. M.
Vol. I.
New York:
Henry Holt & Co.
1878
CONTENTS
Translator’s Preface.
Author’s Preface. (1st Edition.)
From The Author’s Prefaces. (2d to 11th Edition.)
Preliminary Essay.
Introduction.
Chapter I. Fundamental Ideas.
Section I. Goods—Wants.
Section II. Goods.—Economic Goods.
Section III. Goods.—The Three Classes Of Goods.
Section IV. Of Value.—Value In Use.
Section V. Value.—Value In Exchange.
Section VI. Value.—Alleged Contradiction Between Value In Use And
Value In Exchange.
Section VII. Resources Or Means (Vermögen).
Section VIII. Valuation Of Resources.
Section IX. Wealth.
Section X. Wealth.—Signs Of National Wealth.
Section XI. Of Economy (Husbandry).
Section XII. Economy.—Grades Of Economy.
Section XIII. Political Economy.—The Economic Organism.
Section XIV. Origin Of A Nation’s Economy.
Section XV. Diseases Of The Social Organism.
Chapter II. Position Of Political Economy In The Circle Of Related
Sciences.
Section XVI. Political Or National Economy.
Section XVII. Sciences Relating To National Life.—The Science Of
Public Economy.—The Science Of Finance.
Section XVIII. Sciences Relating To National Life.—Statistics.
Section XIX. Private Economy—Cameralistic Science.
Section XX. Private Economy. (Continued.)
Section XXI. What Political Economy Treats Of.
Chapter III. The Methods Of Political Economy.
Section XXII. Former Methods.
Section XXIII. The Idealistic Method.
Section XXIV. The Idealistic Method. (Continued.)
Section XXV. The Idealistic Method. (Continued.)
Section XXVI. The Historical Method—The Anatomy And Physiology Of
Public Economy.
Section XXVII. Advantages Of The Historical Or Physiological Method.
Section XXVIII. Advantages Of The Historical Method. (Continued.)
Section XXIX. The Practical Character Of The Historical Method In
Political Economy.
Book I. The Production Of Goods.
Chapter I. Factors Of Production.
Section XXX. Meaning Of Production.
Section XXXI. The Factors Of Production.—External Nature.
Section XXXII. External Nature.—The Sea.—Climate.
Section XXXIII. External Nature.—Gifts Of Nature With Value In
Exchange.
Section XXXIV. External Nature. (Continued.)
Section XXXV. External Nature.—Elements Of Agricultural
Productiveness.
Section XXXVI. External Nature.—Further Divisions Of Nature’s Gifts.
Section XXXVII. External Nature.—The Geographical Character Of A
Country.
Section XXXVIII. Of Labor.—Divisions Of Labor.
Section XXXIX. Labor.—Taste For Labor.—Piece-Wages.
Section XL. Labor.—Labor-Power Of Individuals.
Section XLI. Labor.—Effect Of The Esteem In Which It Is Held.
Section XLII. Of Capital.—The Classes Of Goods Of Which A Nation’s
Capital Is Made Up.
Section XLIII. Capital.—Productive Capital.
Section XLIV. Capital.—Fixed Capital, And Circulating Capital.
Section XLV. Capital.—How It Originates.
Chapter II. Co-Operation Of The Factors.
Section XLVI. The Productive Coöperation Of The Three Factors.
Section XLVII. Productive Co-Operation Of The Three Factors. The
Three Great Periods Of A Nation’s Economy.
Section XLVIII. Critical History Of The Idea Of Productiveness.
Section XLIX. Critical History Of The Idea Of Productiveness.—The
Doctrine Of The Physiocrates.
Section L. The Same Subject Continued.
Section LI. The Same Subject Continued.
Section LII. Idea Of Productiveness.
Section LIII. The Same Subject Continued.
Section LIV. Importance Of A Due Proportion In The Different
Branches Of Productiveness.
Section LV. The Degree Of Productiveness.
Chapter III. The Organization Of Labor.
Section LVI. Development Of The Division Of Labor.
Section LVII. Development Of The Division Of Labor.—Its Extent At
Different Periods.
Section LVIII. Advantages Of The Division Of Labor.
Section LIX. Conditions Of The Division Of Labor.
Section LX. Influence Of The Extent Of The Market On The Division Of
Labor.
Section LXI. The Division Of Labor—Means Of Increasing It.
Section LXII. The Reverse, Or Dark Side Of The Division Of Labor.
Section LXIII. Dark Side Of The Division Of Labor.—Its Gain And
Loss.
Section LXIV. The Co-Operation Of Labor.
Section LXV. The Principle Of Stability, Or Of The Continuity Of
Work.
Section LXVI. Advantage Of Large Enterprises.
Chapter IV. Freedom And Slavery.
Section LXVII. The Origin Of Slavery.
Section LXVIII. The Same Subject Continued.
Section LXIX. Origin Of Slavery.—Want Of Freedom.
Section LXX. Emancipation.
Section LXXI. Disadvantages Of Slavery.
Section LXXII. Effect Of An Advance In Civilization On Slavery.
Section LXXIII. The Same Subject Continued.
Section LXXIV. The Same Subject Continued.
Section LXXV. The Same Subject Continued.
Section LXXVI. (Appendix To Chapter IV.) The Domestic Servant
System.
Chapter V. Community Of Goods And Private Property. Capital—Property.
Section LXXVII. Capital.—Importance Of Private Property.
Section LXXVIII. Socialism And Communism.
Section LXXIX. Socialism And Communism. (Continued.)
Section LXXX. Socialism And Communism. (Continued.)
Section LXXXI. Community Of Goods.
Section LXXXII. The Organization Of Labor.
Section LXXXIII. The Organization Of Labor. (Continued.)
Section LXXXIV. The Organization Of Labor. (Continued.)
Section LXXXV. The Right Of Inheritance.
Section LXXXVI. Economic Utility Of The Right Of Inheritance.
Section LXXXVII. Landed Property.
Section LXXXVIII. Landed Property. (Continued.)
Chapter VI. Credit.
Section LXXXIX. Credit In General.
Section XC. Credit—Effects Of Credit.
Section XCI. Debtor Laws.
Section XCII. History Of Credit Laws.
Section XCIII. Means Of Promoting Credit.
Section XCIV. Letters Of Respite (Specialmoratorien).
Book II. The Circulation Of Goods.
Chapter I. Circulation In General.
Section XCV. Meaning Of The Circulation Of Goods.
Section XCVI. Rapidity Of Circulation.
Section XCVII. Freedom Of Competition.
Section XCVIII. How Goods Are Paid For.—The Rent For Goods.
Section XCIX. Freedom Of Competition And International Trade.
Chapter II. Prices
Section C. Prices In General.
Section CI. Effect Of The Struggle Of Opposing Interests On Price.
Section CII. Demand.
Section CIII. Demand.—Indispensable Goods.
Section CIV. Influence Of Purchaser’s Solvability On Prices.
Section CV. Supply.
Section CVI. The Cost Of Production.
Section CVII. Equilibrium Of Prices.
Section CVIII. Effect Of A Rise Of Price Much Above Cost.
Section CIX. Effect Of A Decline Of Price Below Cost.
Chapter CX. Different Cost Of Production Of The Same Goods.
Section CXI. Different Cost Of Production Of The Same Goods.
(Continued.)
Section CXII. Exceptions.
Section CXIII. Exceptions. (Continued.)
Section CXIV. Prices Fixed By Government.
Section CXV. Influence Of Growing Civilization On Prices.
Chapter III. Money In General.
Section CXVI. Instrument Of Exchange. Measure Of Value. Barter.
Section CXVII. Effect Of The Introduction Of Money.
Section CXVIII. The Different Kinds Of Money.
Section CXIX. The Metals As Money.
Section CXX. Money—The Precious Metals.
Section CXXI. Value In Use And Value In Exchange Of Money.
Section CXXII. Value In Exchange Of Money.
Section CXXIII. The Quantity Of Money A Nation Needs.
Section CXXIV. The Quantity Of Money A Nation Needs. (Continued.)
Section CXXV. Uniformity Of The Value In Exchange Of The Precious
Metals.
Section CXXVI. Uniformity Of The Value In Exchange Of The Precious
Metals. (Continued.)
Chapter IV. History Of Prices.
Section CXXVII. Measure Of Prices,—Constant Measure.
Section CXXVIII. Value In Exchange Estimated In Labor.
Section CXXIX. The Precious Metals The Best Measure Of Prices.
Section CXXX. History Of The Prices Of The Chief Wants Of Life.
Section CXXXI. History Of The Prices Of The Chief Wants Of Life.
(Continued.)
Section CXXXII. History Of The Prices Of The Chief Wants Of Life.
(Continued.)
Section CXXXIII. History Of The Prices Of The Chief Wants Of Life.
(Continued.)
Section CXXXIV. History Of The Prices Of The Chief Wants Of Life.
(Continued.)
Section CXXXV. History Of The Values Of The Precious Metals.—In
Antiquity And In The Middle Ages.
Section CXXXVI. Effect On The Discovery Of American Mines Etc. On
The Value Of The Precious Metals.
Section CXXXVII. Revolution In Prices At The Beginning Of Modern
History.
Section CXXXVIII. Revolution In Prices.—Influence Of The
Non-Monetary Use Of Gold And Silver.
Section CXXXIX. History Of Prices.—Californian And Australian
Discoveries.
Section CXL. Revolution In Prices.—Its Influence On The National
Resources.
Section CXLI. Effect Of An Enhancement Of The Price Of The Precious
Metals.
Section CXLII. The Price Of Gold As Compared With That Of Silver.
Section CXLIII. The Price Of Gold As Compared With That Of Silver.
(Continued.)
Appendix I. Paper Money.
Section I. Paper Money And Money-Paper.
Section II. Advantages And Disadvantages Of Paper Money.
Section III. Kinds Of Redemption.
Section IV. Compulsory Circulation.
Section V. Resumption Of Specie Payments.
Section VI. Paper Money—A Curse Or A Blessing?
Footnotes
DEDICATION.
TO
WILLIAM H. GAYLORD, ESQ.,
_COUNSELLOR AT LAW_,
OF CLEVELAND, OHIO,
TO WHOSE BROTHERLY CARE IT IS LARGELY DUE THAT I LIVED TO
TRANSLATE THEM,
THESE VOLUMES
ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.
Our literature is rich enough in works on the principles of Political
Economy. So far as the translator is informed, however, it possesses none
in which the science is treated in accordance with the historical method.
We may therefore venture to express the hope that this translation will
fill a place hitherto unoccupied in the literatures of England and
America, and fill it all the more efficiently and acceptably, as Professor
ROSCHER is the founder and still the leader of the historical school of
Political Economy. Were this the only recommendation of our undertaking,
it would not be a useless one. But a glance at Professor ROSCHER’S book
will convince even the most hasty reader that its pages fascinate by their
interest and are rich in treasures of erudition which should not remain
inaccessible to the English student from being locked up in a foreign
tongue.
The present translation has received, throughout, the revision of the
author, and should any imperfections remain in the rendering of his
thought into English, the blame is certainly not his, for his revision has
been most minute.
The three appendices have been supplied by Professor ROSCHER expressly for
this edition. As they are intended to form a part of the work on the
Political Economy of Industry and Commerce, on which he is now engaged, he
authorizes their publication in English, only by the publishers of this
edition of his principles; and only for the purpose of being added to the
present translation. He desires especially that their appearance in their
present shape should not in any way interfere with any of his rights in
his forthcoming volume, and that they should not be translated into any
language nor translated back into German.
The essay of Mr. WOLOWSKI, on the historical method in Political Economy
constitutes no part of Professor ROSCHER’S book, and neither he nor its
author, but only the translator, is responsible for its appearance here.
In it the reader will find a short sketch of the life of Professor
ROSCHER, brought down to the date at which the essay was written. The
translator has little to add to that sketch, all the information he
possesses in addition to what it contains being embraced in the following
lines from a letter received by him from the author in answer to a request
that he would supply the biographical data not to be found in WOLOWSKI’S
essay: “You might perhaps say ... that I have repeatedly declined calls to
the Universities of Munich, Vienna and Berlin, but that I have never
regretted remaining in Leipzig.”
The acknowledgments of the translator are due, in the first place, to the
eminent author himself, for the revision of the plate-proof of the entire
work, and then to Professor WILLIAM F. ALLEN, of the University of
Wisconsin, for his interest in the progress of the enterprise, and for
many valuable suggestions; also to Professor W. G. SUMNER, of Yale
College, for some excellent hints as to the best translation of certain
words in the Appendix on Paper Money.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE. (1ST EDITION.)
My _System der Volkswirthschaft_ shall, _Deo volente_, be completed in
four parts. The second shall contain the national economy of agriculture
and the related branches of natural production; the third, the national
economy of industry and commerce; the fourth, of the economy of the state
and of the commune (_Gemeindehaushalt_). While the entire work shall
constitute one systematic whole, each part shall have its own appropriate
title, constitute an independent treatise, and be sold separately.
Of the peculiar method which I have followed in this work, and which will
produce still better fruits in the succeeding volumes, I have given a
sufficient explanation in §§ 26 ff., and all I desire now is to say a few
words on the relation the notes bear to the text. The careful reader will
soon be convinced that of the many citations in this work, not one has
been made from a vain desire of the display of erudition. Part of them
serves as the necessary proof of surprising facts adduced, but which are
little known. Another part of them is intended to incite the reader to the
study of certain questions nearly related to those treated in the text,
but which are still different from them. The object of the greater number
is to supply information concerning the history of economic principles. As
far as the sources at my command permitted, I have endeavored to point out
the first germs, the chief stages of development, the contrasts, and,
finally, what has been thus far attained in economic science. This
sometimes required some little victory over self, inasmuch as I was
conscious of having independently discovered certain facts, when I
afterwards found that some old and long-forgotten writer had made similar
observations. Thus, this work may serve both as a handbook and as a
history of the literature of Political Economy. Students of the science
know how little has thus far been done by writers in this direction. And
hence I shall be very grateful to those who labor in the same field, if
they will, either by writing to me personally, or through the medium of
the press, inform me when I have erred in ascribing a truth, or a
scientifically important error, to its earliest author.
I have already said in the title that this work is intended not for the
learned only, but for all educated men, for men of a serious turn of mind,
who desire truth and science for their own sake. Like that ancient
historian, whom I honor above all others as my teacher, I desire that my
work should be useful to those, ὅσοι βουλήσοντοι τῶν τε γενομένων τὸ σαφὲς
σκοπεῖν καὶ τῶν μελλόντων ποτὲ αὖθις κατὰ τὸ ἀνθρώπειον τοιούτων καὶ
παραπλησίων ἔσεσθαι. (_Thucydides_ I, 22.)
UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG,
_End of May, 1854._
FROM THE AUTHOR’S PREFACES. (2D TO 11TH EDITION.)
The preface to the second edition is dated October, 1856; that to the
third, April, 1858; that to the fourth, April, 1861; that to the fifth,
November, 1863; that to the sixth, November, 1865; that to the seventh,
November, 1868; that to the eighth, August, 1869; that to the ninth,
March, 1871; that to the tenth, May, 1873; that to the eleventh
(unaltered), December, 1873. Each successive edition, nearly, has been
announced as an improved and enlarged one; and the tenth edition contains
one hundred and fifty-six pages more than the first, although in places, a
large number of abbreviations had been made from previous editions. There
are many things in some of the previous editions which criticism induced
me, long since, to change. I have considered it my duty to the public, who
gave my work so warm and friendly a reception, to take into consideration,
in each successive edition, not only my own new investigations, but those
also of all others with which I became acquainted, and, whenever possible,
to correct statistical illustrations from the latest sources. I have
especially, in each following edition, enriched a number of paragraphs
with here and there historical, ethnographic and statistical features.
Plutarch is certainly right, spite of the fact that pedants may abuse him
for it, when he says, that trifling acts, a word and even a jest, are
often more important, as characterizing the life of a people or an age,
than great battles which cost the lives of tens of thousands of men.
I have changed the titles “Ricardo’s Law of Rent,” and “The Malthusian Law
of the Increase of Population,” which I formerly used, for others. But I
would not be misunderstood here. I hold it to be a duty of reverence in
the learned—as it has long been practiced in the case of the natural
sciences—in the sciences of the human mind to call the natural laws,
methods etc., in acquainting us with which, some one particular
investigator has won very distinguished merit, by the name of that
investigator. In the case of the law of rent, the application of this rule
would as unquestionably entitle Ricardo to this honor as it would Malthus
in that of the increase of population, spite of the fact that Ricardo may
not have succeeded in finding the best possible form of the abstraction,
and although Malthus even, in a one-sided reaction against a former still
greater one-sidedness, was not always able to steer clear of positive and
negative errors. Recent science has endeavored, and successfully, to
examine the facts which contradict the Ricardoan and Malthusian
formulations of the laws in question, and to extend the formulas
accordingly. I have myself contributed hereto to the extent of my ability.
But, in the interval, it is not hard to comprehend that, while this
process of elucidation is going on, most scholars, those especially
possessed more of a dogmatic than of a historical turn of mind, should
estimate these two leaders more in accordance with their few defects than
with the great merits of their discoveries. If, therefore, I now drop the
title “Malthusian law,” it is to guard hasty readers from the illusion
that §§ 242 seq. teach what the great crowd understand by Malthusianism;
when they might, perhaps, omit that portion entirely. For my own part, I
have no doubt that, when the process of elucidation above referred to
shall have been thoroughly finished, the future will accord both to
Ricardo and Malthus their full meed of honor as political economists and
discoverers of the first rank.(1)
PRELIMINARY ESSAY.
Preliminary Essay On The Application Of The Historical Method To The Study
Of Political Economy,
By M. Wolowski,
Member Of The Institute Of France.
“_Nunquam bene percipiemus usu necessarium nisi et noverimus jus
illud usu non necessarium. Nexum est et colligatum alterum alteri.
Nulli sunt servi nobis, cur quæstiones de servis vexamus? Digna
imperito vox._”—_Cuj._, vii, in titul. Dig. De Justitia et
Jure.(2)
“_Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto._”—_Terence._(3)
“_Ista præpotens, ac gloriosa philosophia._”—_Cicero_, De Or., I,
43.(4)
I.
It is no foolish desire to make a vain display of citations, that induces
us, at the beginning of this essay, intended to point out the results of
the application of a new method to the study of Political Economy, to
invoke the authority of a poet and moralist, of a jurisconsult and of a
philosopher. The writer finds in the words just quoted the loftiest
expression of the thought which dictates these lines, viz.: that the
impartial researches of history, a profound feeling of man’s moral and
material wants, and the light of philosophy, should govern in the teaching
of a science, the object of which is to show us how those things which are
intended to satisfy our wants are produced and distributed among the
several classes or individuals of a nation; how they are exchanged one
against another, and how they are consumed.
The nineteenth century affords us something more than the admirable
spectacle of the rapid and fertile development of mechanical power and
natural forces. This is but one of the aspects, we might even say but one
of the results, of the general progress of the human mind. The renovation
of moral and intellectual studies has served as a starting point for the
application to facts of the conquests of thought. Science has preceded
art.
In the foremost rank of the studies just referred to is _philosophy_,
which initiates us into the knowledge of human nature, the basis of right,
and which translates its legitimate aspirations into a language which we
can understand; _history_, that _prophetess_ of the truth, as one of the
ancients called it, which places before us the faithful picture of times
past, not by simply putting together a skeleton of facts, but by following
the living progress of events and the organic development of institutions.
Such, at least, has been the work of those noble minds who have
consecrated their energies to the resuscitation of ages past, in their
true shape, and such is the service for which we are indebted to them for
the successful accomplishment of the reformation of historical studies,
which they attempted with such rare devotion and such marvelous sagacity.
This renovation of history has exerted the most fertile influence in the
region of philosophy, in that of law, and we believe that it will prove no
less useful in that of Political Economy. It has served to put us on our
guard against being easily misled by _a priori_ notions.
By exhibiting to us the results of the life and of the experience of
centuries, by teaching us by what steps the human mind has risen to its
present eminence, and what the education given it in the past has been, it
has enabled us to ascend from phenomena to the principles which preside
over them; from facts to the law; and it has substituted for arbitrary
assumptions and purely ideal systems, the slow but progressive work of the
genius of nations. Not that it turns a deaf ear to the exalted lessons of
philosophy, nor that it denies the _eternal relations resulting from the
nature of things_. Far from it. On the contrary, it supplies a solid basis
to intellectual investigations, and, so to speak, an answer for all the
moral sciences, to this saying of Rœderer: “Politics is a field which has
been traversed thus far only in a balloon; it is time to put foot on solid
ground.”
Neither does history, as thus understood, confine itself to mere
description; it also assumes the office of judge. While it pulls down much
that passion and inaccuracy have reared, and thus restores respect for the
past, it does not turn that past into a fetish. It looks it boldly in the
face and questions it, instead of prostrating itself before it and
worshipping it with downcast eyes. Thus, by plainly showing us the many
bonds which tie us to it, it escapes at once both the rashness of
impatience and the wearisomeness of routine.
The impartiality it inculcates is not indifference; and there is no danger
that the justice it metes out to past ages shall degenerate into a vain
scepticism or a convenient optimism.
The study of history, thus understood, has another advantage; it accustoms
us to those patient and disinterested investigations, to those lengthy
labors, the positive result of which at first escapes us for a time, only
to burst on our eyes, with so much more brilliancy, when rigorous research
has succeeded in discovering it. It frees us from the deadly constraint of
immediate utility.
There is nothing more fatal to science than the feverish impatience for
results which obtains only too much in our own days, and which induces
people to run after him who is in the greatest hurry, and which leads to
hasty conclusions.
“Research undertaken from a disinterested love of science,” says the
learned Hugo, one of the masters of the historical school of law in
Germany,(5) “that research which at first promises no other advantage but
truth and the culture of the mind, is precisely that which brings us the
richest rewards. Would we not be behind, in all the sciences, if we had
clung only to those principles, the utility of which in practice was
already known? Do we not, to-day, from many a discovery, reap advantages
of which its author never dreamed?”
Doubtless this tendency, unless restrained by other demands, is not exempt
from danger. We may be carried away by the attraction peculiar to these
noble studies, withdraw into antiquity and fall into a species of
historical mysticism which ends in the affirmation, that whatever has been
is true, absolutely, and which, instead of confining itself to the
explanation of transitory phenomena, invests them with all the dignity of
principles. We shall endeavor to avoid the peril pointed out by
Mallebranche. “Learned men study rather to acquire a chimerical greatness
in the imagination of other men, than to acquire greater breadth and
strength of mind themselves. They make their heads a kind of store-room,
into which they gather, without order or discrimination, everything which
has a look of erudition,—I mean to say everything which may seem rare or
extraordinary and excite the wonder of other people. They glory in getting
together, in this archæological museum, antiques with nothing that is rich
or solid about them, and the price of which depends on nothing but fancy,
chance or passion.”
A display of erudition may obscure the truth, and bury it under its
weight, instead of bringing it out into relief. By concentrating the mind
on the material vestiges of the past, it may withdraw it from the
intellectual movement of the present, and give us a race of scholars, of
great merit, doubtless, but who move about like strangers among their
contemporaries.
Without a sense for the practical, and without ideas of an elevated
nature, a person may, indeed, be a man of erudition—he cannot be a
historian. As the proverb says, the forest cannot be seen, for the trees.
That this noble study may bear its best and most useful fruit; that is,
that it should preserve us against ambitious _formulas_ and destructive
chimeras, we must pursue another way.
“The world,” says Montaigne, “is incapable of curing itself. It is so
impatient of what burthens it, that it thinks only of how it shall rid
itself of it, without inquiring at what price. A thousand examples show us
that it cures itself ordinarily at its own cost. The getting rid of the
present evil is not cure, unless there be a general amendment of
condition. Good does not immediately succeed evil. One evil, and a worse,
may follow another, like Cæsar’s assassins, who brought the republic to
such a pass, that they had reason to repent the meddling with it.” Such,
too frequently, is the lot of those who, abandoning themselves to their
imagination, and without consulting the past, mix together promises of
liberty and the despotism of Utopias which they would impose on nations
under pretext of enfranchising them. Despising the work of the ages, they
think they can build upon a soil shaken by destruction and crumbled, until
it may be likened to moving sand.
Contempt for the past is associated with a passion for reform. Men think
of destroying that which should only be transformed. They condemn
everything that has been, unconditionally, and launch out towards a new
future. The suffering which has been gone through irritates and troubles
the mind. The work of pulling down is so easy, it is supposed that the
work of building up is equally so. Hence systems rise, as if the world
were to begin anew. The pride of liberty and of human action becomes the
principle of science; and, like all new principles, it pretends to
exclusive and absolute dominion. Rationalism governs; abstract philosophy
ignores the traditions and the requirements of the life of nations; and
finds now in it, as in geometry, nothing but principles and deductions.
The memory of recent oppression causes us to act as Tarquin did, and to
level down the higher classes instead of elevating the inferior. Liberty
and equality then govern by their negative side, instead of exercising the
positive and beneficent influence they should have, to develop all forces
to their utmost, to ennoble the mind, to give more elasticity to the soul
and greater vigor to thought, to give birth to those varied forms and to
that moral energy, which should bring us nearer to final equality in the
bosom of God.(6)
We forget that no one is born _free_, and that every one ought to endeavor
to become so,
Feindlich ist des Mannes Streben
Mit zermalmender Gewalt
Geht der Wilde durch des Leben
Ohne Rast und Aufenthalt,
—_Schiller_.
and make himself worthy of liberty, by the exercise of manly virtue!
Because the form has been changed, we believe that we have changed human
nature.
It is easy to understand, why, where these ideas prevail, the study of the
past should be neglected and despised. Efforts are made to avoid it. Why,
it is asked, revive memories of oppression and misery? The old world is
wrecked. It is annihilated. Peace to its ashes! Or else, after it has been
destroyed, it is sought for again; and, under pretext of eradicating the
evils existing in it, an attack is made on the eternal basis on which
human society rests, on the laws not made by man, and which it is not
given to man to change. The world becomes one vast laboratory, in which
the rashest experiments are multiplied in number, in which mankind is but
clay in the hands of the potter which every pretended “thinker” may mould
at will, by giving him the false appearances of independence and of an
emancipated being.
And, indeed, if the will of man be all-powerful, if states are to be
distinguished from one another only by their boundaries, if everything may
be changed like the scenery in a play by a flourish of the magic wand of a
system, if man may arbitrarily make the right, if nations can be put
through evolutions like a regiment of troops; what a field would the world
present for attempts at the realization of the wildest dreams, and what a
temptation would be offered to take possession, by main force, of the
government of human affairs, to destroy the rights of property and the
rights of capital, to gratify ardent longings without trouble, and provide
the much coveted means of enjoyment. The Titans have tried to scale the
heavens, and have fallen into the most degrading materialism. Purely
speculative dogmatism sinks into materialism.
All is changed, both men and things. Yet we hear the same old style of
declamation. There are those who wish to plough up the soil which the
harrow of the revolution went over yesterday; and they believe they are
marching in the way of progress. They do not see that they have mistaken
their age, and that the bold attempts of the past have now come to possess
a directly opposite meaning. Without stopping to inquire to what side the
new world inclines, they repeat the same words, and swear _in verba
magistri_, and go the road of destruction, believing themselves to be
creating the world anew!
Nothing is more natural than that these excesses should produce other
excesses, in a contrary direction. Moved by hatred or fear of
revolutionary absolutism, nations seek an asylum in governmental
absolutism, or they retrograde towards the middle ages, and consider the
mutual bond of protection and dependence of that period as the ideal and
the realization of true liberty. History is no longer the organic
development of social life, and man, like a soldier that thoughtlessly and
capriciously has gone beyond his place of supplies, is obliged to retrace
his steps. The reaction is clearly defined. The past is opposed to the
present, not as a lesson to be turned to advantage, but as a model which
must be hastily accepted; and men become revolutionary in a backward
direction.
However, history, rigorously studied, knows neither these complaisances
nor these weaknesses. It does not descend to the apotheosis of a past
which cannot return again. The real historical spirit consists in rightly
discerning what belongs to each epoch. Its object is, by no means, to call
back the dead to life, but to explain why and how they lived. In harmony
with a healthy philosophy, it assigns a limit to the vagaries of arbitrary
will, beyond which the latter cannot go. It unceasingly calls us back,
from the heights of abstraction, to positive facts and things.
In the creation of systems, only one thing was wont to be forgotten, men,
who were treated, in them, like so many ciphers; for intellectual
despotism has this in common with all despotic authority. History teaches
us that we can reach nothing great or lasting, but by addressing ourselves
to the soul. If the soul decays, there can be no longer great thoughts or
great actions. Society lives by the spirit which inhabits it. It may, for
an instant, submit to the empire of force, but, in the long run, it
hearkens only to the voice of justice. It was thus that the greatest
revolution which history records, that of Christianity, was accomplished.
It addressed itself only to the soul; but by changing the hearts of men,
it transformed society entirely.
The violent struggle between an imperious dogmatism and an unintelligent
and mistaken attempt at a retrogressive movement is resolved into a higher
view, which permits the union of conservatism and progress. Violent
attempts and rash endeavors made, threatened to bring contempt on the
noblest teachings of philosophy, and to make them repulsive to man; and,
on the other hand, a blind respect for the institutions consecrated by
history threatened to stifle all examination and all freedom of judgment.
But a healthier doctrine has permitted us to understand, that we are
continuing the work of preceding generations; that we are developing the
germs which they successively sowed; that we are perfecting that which
they had only sketched, and that we are letting drop that which has no
support in the social condition of man. Every thing is connected; each
thing is linked to every other; nothing is repeated. The hopes of sudden
and total renovation, based on absolute formulas, vanish before the touch
of this solid study. This shows us how firm and unshaken are those reforms
which have begun by taking hold of the minds of men, the precise spirit of
which had penetrated into the souls of whole nations before they had
manifested themselves in facts.
Law and Economy constitute a part of the life of nations in the same way
that language and customs do. The power of history in no way contradicts
the supremacy of reason.
II.
These two tendencies, the rationalistic and the historical, are everywhere
found face to face. They carry on an eternal warfare, which is renewed in
every age, under new names and new forms. Accomplished facts and
renovating thought divide the world between them. They at one time
moderate its speed, and at others, spur it on its way. But these two
forces, instead of compromising the destinies of humanity by their
opposing action, maintain and balance them, as the contrary impulses given
by the hand of the Great Architect has peopled the universe with worlds
which gravitate in space.
Victor Cousin, a very competent authority on the subject, has said that
the history of philosophy is the torch of philosophy itself. The
remarkable works which have enriched it in this direction are well known.
History, on its side, is enlightened by philosophy. Thus, it teaches us
not to despise facts, but at the same time not to be slaves to precedent.
It does equal justice to the incredulous and to the fanatic, to too supple
practitioners and to intractable theorizers.
We may doubtless say with Henri Klimrath, who, in connection with a few
others, had undertaken the work of the restoration of historical study in
its application to French law, that there is an absolute, true, beautiful,
good and just, the _ratio recta summi Jovis_,(7) the supreme reason
founded in the nature of things.(8) The eternal truths taught by
philosophy constitute the higher law, a law which dates not from the day
on which it was reduced to writing, but from the day of its birth; and it
was born with the divine intelligence itself. “_Qui non tum denique
incipit lex esse, cum scripta est, sed tum cum orta est. Orta autem simul
est cum mente divina._”(9) And Troplong rightly adds: “There are rules
anterior to all positive laws. I cannot grant that the action of
conscience and the idea of right are the work of the legislator. It is not
law that made the family, property, liberty, equality, the idea of good
and evil. It may, indeed, give organization to all these things, but in
doing so, it is only working on the foundation which nature has laid, and
it is perfect in proportion as it comes nearer to the eternal, immutable
laws which the Creator has engraved on our hearts. What changes is not the
eternal law, the revelation of which comes to man incessantly and by a
necessary action, but the form in which humanity clothes it, the
institutions which man builds on its immutable foundation.”(10)
We therefore believe in the law of nature, and regret that our opinion is
not shared by Mr. Roscher, at least that he does not explicitly enough
express his faith in it, nor apply it broadly enough in the beautiful work
which we are happy to render accessible to the French public.(11) We
believe in it in its philosophical sense, and not simply in the juridical
sense attached to it by Ulpian. “Let us not,” observes Portalis, “confound
the physical order of nature, common to all animated beings, with the
natural law which is peculiar to man. We call _natural law_, the
principles which govern man considered as a moral being, that is, as an
intelligent and free being, intended to live in the society of other
beings, intelligent and free like himself.”(12) Ulpian’s famous tripartite
division, of natural law, the law of nations, and the civil law, is proof,
from the meaning he attaches to them, either of a misunderstanding or of
the imperfect idea which the Stoics had conceived of the essence of
natural law. In vain Cujas exhausted all the resources of his noble
intellect to explain it.(13)
It is necessary to draw a distinction between physical law and the law
(_droit_) of intelligent beings. Doubtless the existence of men as well as
that of animals is limited by time. They both live and die; but the soul
escapes the necessities of material nature.
The moment there is question of _right_, intelligence governs, reason
comes into play, and the science of right and wrong is appealed to as a
guide. Hence the _natural_ law of the human species is not the physical
law which all creatures obey.
It was necessary for us to insist upon these principles. It was necessary
for us to show that there is a law independent of positive and local law,
a law which is not the expression of an arbitrary will, but an emanation
from the nature of things.(14)
Hence come the features in common which we meet with everywhere, and the
variable forms which develop law in harmony with the special conditions of
each civil society.
We must descend into the very depths of human nature to discover these
eternal and permanent laws; and if the mere effort of the mind should not
reach them directly, they might be discovered in the phenomena of the life
of nations. History affords us the counter-proof and confirmation of the
philosophical doctrine.
The development of society does not afford a mathematical expression of
these higher truths. It gives them a form which is unceasingly modified in
the written law. The person who discovers in them nothing but an absolute
rule, looks upon the changes as evidences of caprice and error. He alone
understands the revolutions of things who knows their cause and the
necessity which produces them.
Solon was right when he gave the Athenians not the most perfect laws, but
the best which they could bear.
It is not in the attempts contemporary with the infancy of society, or
nearly so, that we are to look for the complete realization of the
precepts of the natural law; for principles obey the rule laid down by
Aristotle. “The nature of each thing is precisely that which constitutes
its end; and when each being has attained its entire development, we say
that that is its own proper nature.”(15)
The ideas of natural law are purified in proportion as society grows
enlightened and free; but the truth appears only successively in the
phases it passes through. It allows us to grasp one aspect of itself after
another, but does not surrender itself entirely, at any one moment, to the
investigations of the historian or the jurisconsult.
History and philosophy interpenetrate and complement one another.
III.
The two schools, that of philosophy and that of history have met in our
day, in the field of law. Who is there that does not remember the great
and noble contest carried on, about the beginning of this century, between
two descendants of Frenchmen who had sought a refuge in Germany, and who
united in their own persons, and in so marvelous a manner, the different
aptitudes of the country they owed their origin to, and of the land that
gave them birth,—between Thibaut and Savigny?
It would be difficult to find a scientific question of a higher character,
debated by champions more worthy to throw light upon it.
The _Code Napoléon_ had appeared. It had, to use Rossi’s happy expression,
transferred into law the social revolution produced by the destruction of
privilege. It was the practical formula expressive of the conquests which
had been made.
The philosophy of the eighteenth century had previously inspired the
Prussian Code. And yet, it was on the question of codification that this
memorable controversy was carried on. The two principal combatants, while
manfully battling, the one against the other, continued to hold each other
in high esteem, and the profound study of law was developed in the midst
of the _melée_.
We cannot delay long on this subject, nor analyze the arguments advanced
by Thibaut(16) and Savigny.(17) What interests us at present is not so
much the question debated, as the intellectual movement to which it gave
birth. Savigny sustained the ancient law, Thibaut attacked it. Numerous
and distinguished jurisconsults ranged themselves on the one side and the
other. A new school grew up which, with the most brilliant success, made
law throw light on history and history on law.
The application of the historical method to the study of law was
productive of the most happy results.
Without acknowledging it to themselves, the chiefs of the contending
parties were each obeying a political impulse. Savigny was by his birth
and his tastes carried into the camp of conservatism; Thibaut, led by his
convictions, into the liberal ranks. Nevertheless, the natural elevation
of their genius preserved them from all exaggeration. The glorious
defender of tradition preserved a liberal spirit, and the ardent advocate
of reform desired no upheaval.
In what more nearly concerns the question with which we are now occupied,
Savigny—while he maintained that law was something contingent, human,
national; and while he brought out into relief the practical and exalted
character of its successive developments which introduced reform and
guarded against revolution—developments which, not confiding in the letter
of the written law, unceasingly feed the living and created law, that law
called in the energetic language of a great jurisconsult, a law _écrit es
coeurs des citoyens_—is far from denying the importance of a high and
healthy philosophy which directs man in the uninterrupted labor to which
he is called, in the sphere of jurisprudence.
Men can no more renounce law than language, the forms of which last they
have gradually modified in order to better translate their thoughts into
words. The legislator’s task is the successive elaboration of obligatory
provisions. He will sometimes oppose and sometimes second the natural
progress of law; but, in doing so, it will ever be necessary for him to
ascend to the nature of things, and grasp their relations, if he would not
go astray in practice, or lose himself among the successive and partial
changes to which the illustrious Berlin professor would confine the
legitimate ambition of legislative power. To go beyond this, in an age
like ours, seemed to him to be a work of destruction. However, far from
denying the influence of thought, and therefore of philosophy, acting
within its sphere, Savigny invokes its fertile aid.
Thibaut, on the other hand, with more confidence in the powers of the
spirit of modern times, did not believe a good codification to be
impossible. His starting point had been a cry for national independence.
He well knew how much veneration was due those institutions which were the
slow and progressive work of national genius, and what was the power they
possessed. He wished, therefore, to reform, not to abolish them. He well
understood that the greatness of the _Code Napoléon_ itself, and the
respect which it inspired were due to the fact that its roots ran deep
into the soil of the past, even while the modern idea it contained shone
like a bright light in the world of things. Hence, without contesting the
value of history, he refused to acknowledge its right to exclusive
reign.(18)
The life and activity prevailing in the study of law, and the brilliant
successes that study has recently achieved, are due, in great part, to the
illustrious representatives of the historical school. We may add, here,
that the French historical school, which has so worthily inherited the
spirit of Montesquieu, has not achieved less in this direction than the
older German school. It has reconciled the opposing but not mutually
hostile, tendencies of Savigny and Thibaut. It has conscientiously
scrutinized facts to show their concatenation, and to allow their meaning
and bearing to be clearly grasped. A French jurisconsult, who is at the
same time our highest authority in the natural law, opened the way by his
excellent essays on the necessity of reforming the historical studies
applicable to law; on the influence of the legists on French
civilization(19) etc.; and by his prefaces, equal in value to whole works,
on hypothecation, sales, loans, partnership, charter-parties etc. He may
truly be said to have renewed the ancient and prolific alliance of history
and law.
Instead of pursuing a pure abstraction, this historical school has
confined itself to the knowledge of the life of man and the evolution of
society. It has applied to law, with what success is well known, the
principle which has regenerated the social sciences, philosophy, letters,
history, Political Economy,—sciences which are, so to speak, different
provinces of one intellectual empire, which interpenetrate one another
without being confounded one with another, between which no jealous
barrier should be raised, and between which reciprocity of exchange should
be encouraged by the suppression of factitious duties, which have existed
only too long.
IV.
We need not dwell any longer on the character of the historical method as
applied to law, nor on the services it has already rendered. On this
point, there can be no two opinions. And, if any one wonders that we
should speak of it at all, in a work on Political Economy, we can only say
to him, that we have done so to call his attention to an instructive
precedent, and for the further reason that the same method is peculiarly
well adapted to the study of Political Economy. Its advantages are the
same here, its tendencies the same, and the same motives exist to induce
us to use it here. In describing the successive phases of the question in
the case of law, we have performed an important part of the task we had
imposed upon ourselves, of vindicating the employment of the historical
method, in the sphere of Political Economy.
The study of history is the best and most powerful antidote against social
romances and ideal fancies. François Beaudouin was right when he said:
“_Cæca sine historia jurisprudentia_;” and we are very sure that, without
history as an element in it, Political Economy runs a great risk of
walking blindfold.
The human mind has need of being able to know where it is at any moment,
surrounded, as it is, by so many roads, running in so many different
directions. It ought to account to itself for its progress, its deviations
from the right path, and for its mistakes.(20) History alone can throw any
light on questions which are not simply intellectual curiosities, but
which, rather, are most deeply concerned with the vital interests of
society. It confirms the noble teachings of philosophy, by showing how our
life is made up of one unchanging tissue of relations, and how man, even
if he may vary their colors, and change their design, cannot renew their
texture.
It teaches us to admire nothing, and to despise nothing, beyond measure.
It enlightens us concerning questions of a very complicated nature.
Witnessing the evolutions of humanity, following the development of social
facts and theories, we better discern principles, and grow wary in
relation to the alchemists of thought, who imagine that society may be
made to undergo a transformation between the rising and the setting of the
sun.
As there is a natural law, so, too, there are certain principles of
Political Economy which emanate from philosophy, and may be reduced to one
supreme principle; that of liberty and responsibility. The domain of
Political Economy is the _labor_ of generations. But we reject with all
our strength, the materialistic doctrine which, inexplicably confusing
matters, endeavors to assimilate ideas so distinct as intelligence and
things; and which would descend so low as to employ the dynamometer to
measure the creative force of man and its results, and which sees only
figures where there is a living soul.
Man is an intelligent being, served by organs,(21) by _personal_ organs,
with which the Creator has endowed him, by giving him a body provided with
marvellous aptitudes, by _external_ organs which he finds in nature
subjected to his power. Man was created in the image of God, say the
Scriptures, and these words contain a deep meaning. He alone, of all
terrestrial beings, possesses a spark of divine intelligence. He alone has
been called to pursue the magnificent work of creation, by giving a new
face to a world to which he cannot add so much as an atom.
_Labor_ is nothing but the action of spirit on itself and on matter.(22)
Hence its dignity and grandeur. Hence, also, the difficulties in the way
of economic studies; since, to consider them only as concerned with
questions of material production, is to forget that the products of
industry are made for man, not man for industrial products; to ignore the
close relationship between their fruitful investigations and the whole
circle of the moral sciences; to debase them and to mutilate them.
From the moment that science concerns itself with man only, and the action
of the mind; from the moment that its end becomes not simply material
enjoyment, but moral elevation, the questions it discusses become indeed
more complex, but the answer, when found, is more prolific in results.
Wealth, then, is treated only as one of the forces of civilization. Other
interests than purely material ones occupy the first place. This
matter-of-fact philosophy which, according to Bacon’s precept, seeks to
improve the conditions of life, bears in mind, that the most fruitful
source of material development lies in intellectual development. It humbly
recognizes that it is not the first-born of the family, and draws new
strength from this avowal. From the moment that it is the mind which
_produces_ and which governs the world, intellectual and moral perfection
become the cause and effect of material progress. “But seek ye first the
kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added
unto you.”
The increase of production, then, appears an instrument of elevation in
the moral order.(23) It is energy of soul, intelligence and manly virtue
which constitute the chief source of the wealth of nations; which create
it, develop it, and preserve it. Wealth increases, declines, and
disappears with the increase, decline and disappearance of these noble
attributes of the soul.
Labor is the child of thought. Nothing happens in the external world which
was not first conceived in the mind. The hand is the servant of the
intellect; and its work is successful, beautiful or useful in proportion
to the activity and development of the intellect, and in proportion as the
just, the beautiful and the good exert their power over it.
Production is, therefore, not a material, but a spiritual, work. How,
then, can acts and their morality be separated? How not understand that
the market of labor has its own distinct laws, and that education, even
from a material stand-point, becomes the highest interest and the most
important duty of society, since on it depends the efficiency of labor?
From the time that, after a long series of years, the doctrine of
Christianity had permeated the law of the civilized world; from the time
that the teaching of Paul, that all men are children of one Father, took
form and body, and that the principle of the equality of all men before
their Maker, was supplemented by the doctrine and by the practice of that
equality before the laws, the thinking masses have endeavored to discover
the wherefore of their actions, and the why of their sufferings. They have
called the past to account, and inquired why they have obtained so limited
a share.
The people, therefore, think; and it is, therefore, a matter of importance
that they should think aright. It is of importance, that they should be
guarded against fallacious Utopian promises. Henceforth, there is no
security for the stability of the world but in the contentment of minds.
There is no rest for mankind, unless men will understand the conditions of
their destiny; unless, instead of running,
“Toujours insatiable et jamais assouvis,”
after the intoxicating cup of material enjoyment—for wants not governed by
the intellect and the heart are infinite in number, and the gratification
of one gives birth to another—they submit to the law of sacrifice, and
give play to the noblest faculty with which the Creator has endowed us,
moral empire over self.
We shall meet on this road, hard of ascent, not only peace of soul, but
goods, more real and more numerous, than those with which the allurements
of error would dazzle our eyes. The greatest obstacles to be overcome are
not material ones, but moral difficulties. As Franklin says, in substance,
he that tells you you can succeed, in any way but by labor and economy, is
a quack.
But labor is more productive in proportion as it is more intelligent, as
hand and mind keep pace with each other, as good moral habits generate
order and voluntary discipline.
Economy is sacrifice, binding the present to the future, widening the
horizon of thought, inspiring foresight, lengthening the lever of human
activity, by providing it with new instruments.
Life ceases to be a worry about how the body shall be sustained, and the
material world becomes the shadow of the spiritual. The former is made to
serve the latter, and man’s free effort lifts him into a higher region of
thought, and into a larger field of action. The more mind there is put
into a piece of work, says Channing, the more it is worth.
We, men of to-day, are lookers-on at a marvelous spectacle. Steam furrows
the earth. Industry has taken an immense start. Mechanical force bends the
most rebellious materials. Chemistry, physics and the natural sciences are
discovering a new world. But whence all this? What is the principle of
this new life? We answer: intellectual and moral progress. Mind has grown;
the soul has been expanded. God has permitted man to be free, and
furnished him with the means to be so.
Thus man, as Mignet has said, becomes that mighty creature to whom God has
given the earth for the vast theater of his action, the universe as the
inexhaustible object of his knowledge, the forces of nature for the
growing service of his wants, by allowing him, by ever increasing
information, to obtain an ever increasing amount of well-being.
Man is free.—1789 put in action the sublime precept of the gospel. He
holds his destiny in his own hands. But the rights which he enjoys impose
new duties on him. If _equality_ be the sentiment which predominates in
our day, we should take care not to confound it with the leveling of
Communism. Nor is it externally to us, but within ourselves, that it
should be developed, by intellectual and moral culture.
History preserves the student from being led astray by a too servile
adherence to any system. It exposes the folly of the “social contract,”
and of the idyllic dreams of the advantages of savage life. It shows that
nature, instead of being prodigal of her treasures, distributes them with
a niggardly hand, and that it is necessary to conquer her by labor,
intelligence and patience before we can control her.
It shows us human liberty growing stronger every day, thanks to moral and
intellectual progress, supported by the two powerful props of property,
the complement of man, the material reflection of his spiritual power; and
capital, the fruit of abstinence, the symbol of moral power and the result
of enlightened activity.
History walks with a firm step, because it feels secure in a knowledge of
the laws of human nature, and in its experience of the successive
manifestations of social life. Instead of the vagueness of ideal
conceptions, it allows us to grasp and to appreciate what is real in life.
It does not confine itself to the study of man. It makes us acquainted
with _men_, whose wants extend and are ennobled in proportion to the
perfection of their faculties. The feelings and the intellect are
simultaneously developed in man. The savage is the most egotistical of
men.
Hence, we believe that Political Economy cannot dispense with the services
of morals and philosophy, of history and law; for these are branches of
one common trunk, through all of which the self-same sap circulates.
V.
The isolation of the theory of Political Economy is peculiar to our own
day. In more remote times, we find this study confounded with the other
moral sciences, of which it was an integral part. When the genius of Adam
Smith gave it a distinct character, he did not desire to separate it from
those branches of knowledge without which it could only remain a bleached
plant from the absence of the sunlight of ethics.
We must renounce the singular idea,(24) that thousands of years could pass
away without leaving any trace of what enlightened men had thought and
elaborated in the matter of Political Economy, among so many nations, and
that people should never have thought of cultivating this rich
intellectual domain, while in every other direction, it is easy for us to
ascend by a road already cleared up to the most remote antiquity.
It has already been acknowledged, that the _classic domain_, fertilized by
intellectual culture on a large scale and on a small one, was exceedingly
rich in valuable indications, although they do not present themselves
under the distinct form, which later affected the different branches of
public life.
As to the pretended _primitive simplicity_ of the middle ages, which it is
claimed, prevailed during that period, a species of economic vegetation,
those who maintain it forget the long series of communistic theories
which, at near intervals, found expression in many a bloody struggle, and
whose repression required the combined efforts of Church and State.
Doubtless, it is not in their modern forms that the elements of
politico-economical science are to be found, in the past. But when we
succeed in reuniting the scattered and broken parts; when we have made our
way into the customs, decrees, ordinances, capitularies, laws and
regulations of those times; when, so to speak, we come, unaware, upon the
life of nations, in the most ingenuous and confidential documents which
reflect it most faithfully because most simply, we may well be astonished
at the results obtained. Where we expected, perhaps, to find only
erudition, we reap a rich harvest of lessons which are all the more
valuable for being disinterested.
Legislative and administrative acts frequently develop real economic
doctrines. It is easy to discover in them the onward course of a theory
which plunges directly into practical applications.
What results might we not expect from these efforts, if the genius of
investigation and of divination, which has so elevated historical studies
in our day, should have an observing and penetrating eye in this
direction! How limited was the field on which Guérard erected the
scientific monument which he has left us in his _Polyptique d’Irminon_;
and how precious are the lessons he leaves us, since we have here to do,
not with the history of professed doctrines or unlooked-for events, but
with the historical development of economic society which shows us the
living march of principles.
VI.
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.
INTRODUCTION.
Chapter I.
Fundamental Ideas.
Section I.
Goods—Wants.
The starting point, as well as the object-point of our science is Man.(49)
Every man has numberless wants, physical and intellectual.(50)(51) Wants
are either necessaries, decencies (_Anstandsbedürfnisse_) or luxuries. The
non-satisfaction of necessary wants causes disease or death; that of the
wants of decency endangers one’s social position.(52) The much greater
number, and the longer continuance of his wants are among the most
striking differences between man and the brute:(53) wants such as
clothing, fuel,(54) tools, and those resulting from his much longer period
of infancy; which last, together with other causes, has contributed so
largely to make marriage necessary and universal. While the lower animals
have no wants, but necessities, and while their aggregate-want, even in
the longest series of generations, admits of no qualitative increase, the
circle of man’s wants is susceptible of indefinite extension.(55) And,
indeed, every advance in culture made by man finds expression in an
increase in the number and in the keenness of his rational wants. No man
who distinguishes himself in anything, but feels spurred thereto by a
peculiar want; and this want is both the cause and the effect of the power
which is peculiar to him. No one but the poet feels the want of poetizing;
no one but the philosopher, of philosophizing. In every particular,
intellectual or physical, in which the man is in advance of the child, he
experiences new wants unknown to the child. Our education consists, for
the most part, in awakening wants and providing for their satisfaction.
Goods are anything which can be used, whether directly or indirectly, for
the satisfaction of any true(56) or legitimate human want,(57) and whose
utility, for this purpose, is recognized. Hence, the idea goods is an
essentially relative one. Every change in man’s wants, or knowledge, is
accompanied by a rapid, corresponding change, either in the limits of the
circle(58) of goods, or in their relative importance. Thus, the tobacco
plant has, probably, existed thousands of years. It became goods, however,
only from the time that man recognized its use for smoking, snuffing etc.,
and experienced the want of it for these purposes. In a similar way, the
limestone of the Solenhofen quarries has become _goods_, of considerable
importance, only since the invention of lithography; decaying bones, only
since that of bone-dust manure; caoutchouc since about 1825, and
gutta-percha, only since 1844. On the other hand, charms,(59) philters,
and even relics, since the decay of faith in their efficacy, have lost the
quality of goods. If the aggregate income of all mankind were, by some
sudden revolution, to be equally divided among all, diamonds, for
instance, would greatly decline in value, for the reason that it is
dependent, in great part, on the wants generated by vanity, or by the
desire of outshining others. Beer, tobacco etc., would rise in the scale
as goods, because the circle of those to whose wants they minister would
have been very greatly extended. On the whole, advancement in civilization
has uniformly the effect, of itself, to increase the quantity and number
of goods, the wants and knowledge of men being thereby increased. We
should reach the ideal here, if all men experienced only true or
legitimate wants, but these completely; if they could see their way,
clearly, to the satisfaction of them, and find the means of satisfying
them with just the amount of effort most conducive to their
physico-intellectual development.(60)
Section II.
Goods.—Economic Goods.
By economy (_Wirthschaft_=husbandry or housekeeping), we mean the
systematized activity of man, to satisfy his need (_Bedarf_=requisite) of
external goods.(61) This treatise is concerned only with economic goods
(ends or means of economy).(62) The greater the advance of civilization or
human culture, the less apt are men to pursue the satisfaction of their
wants, isolated from their fellows, or, in other words, to carry on their
economies or husbandries apart from one another. The more numerous the
wants of men, and the more different in kind their faculties are, the more
natural does exchange(63) become. Since all goods derive their character
as goods from the fact that they are destined to satisfy human wants, the
very possibility of exchange must greatly increase the possibility of
things to become goods. Think of the machinist, whose products are used
only by the astronomer, while the latter is never in a way to manufacture
them for himself. (_Hufeland._) Commerce is the series of combinations,
created by the interchange of services: “a living net of relations, which
wants and services are ever weaving and unweaving.” (_Hermann._) As a
rule, with an advance in civilization, there is an increase in the number
of goods, which become economic goods, and in the number of economic goods
which become commercial goods (objects or means promotive of
commerce).(64) But this is to be considered a real advancement only to the
extent that that which is obtained is superior to that which was possessed
before, in consequence of the specialization of callings or the greater
division of labor (§ 48 ff.). When a little street Arab exacts money from
a stranger for pointing out the way, we rightly censure him; but no one
would find it improper if he should first fit himself to play the part of
a guide, and then live by his calling.(65)
Section III.
Goods.—The Three Classes Of Goods.
All economic goods are divided into three classes:
A. _Persons or personal services._ It is entirely repugnant to the feeling
of humanity to regard a man’s person in its entirety as an instrument
intended to satisfy the wants of another.(66) Yet this happens wherever
slavery exists; in its coarsest form, in cannibalism. Among civilized
nations, we can speak, under this head, only of individual services or
capabilities of persons; or, indeed, of the aggregate of the services
rendered by them during a time determined at pleasure, or a short
time.(67)
B. _Things_, both moveable and immovable.(68)
C. _Relations_ to persons or things which may frequently be estimated just
as accurately as material goods. (The _res incorporales_ of the Roman
law.) I need only mention what is called good-will, which freely, and to
the advantage of customers themselves, but still with a limited amount of
certainty, attaches to certain localities, and for which tavern-keepers,
sometimes, as in theaters, dépôts and clubs, pay so enormous a rent.(69)
When a newspaper is sold, the purchaser frequently buys nothing but the
existing relations between his colaborers, subscribers etc. No small part
of the value of a good business firm consists in the confidence with which
it inspires all who deal with it, thus sparing them a world of care and
trouble.(70) A general may be of incalculable value to an army which he
has himself helped organize. In another, or in the service of a country
not his own, he might be entirely valueless, incapable of accomplishing
anything.(71) With the progress of civilization, as man becomes more
social, the number of valuable relations increases, while that of
legalized monopolies is wont to decrease. (_Schäffle._)(72)
Section IV.
Of Value.—Value In Use.
The economic value of goods is the importance they possess for the
purposes of man, considered as engaged in economy (housekeeping,
husbandry.(73))
Looked at from the point of view of the person who wishes to employ them
in his use directly, doubtless the oldest point of view, value appears
first as value in use; and here, according to the difference of subjective
purposes it is intended to subserve, we may speak of production value or
enjoyment-value; and of this last, in turn, as utilization-value, or
consumption-value. The value in use of goods, is greater in proportion as
the number of wants they are calculated to satisfy are more general and
more urgent, and in proportion as they are gratified by them more fully,
surely, durably, easily and pleasantly.(74) Hence, it is seldom possible
to find an accurate mathematical expression of the relation which exists
between the value in use of different goods.(75) Thus, it is possible to
estimate the nutritive power of different kinds of goods, the value of
wheat or of hay for instance, but not the goodness or quality of their
taste, of the attractiveness of their appearance, etc.
But, the more men become used to comparing the aggregate of human wants,
and the aggregate of the goods which minister to the satisfaction of these
wants, as if they were two great wholes, gradually shading each into the
other, the more does the value in use of the different kinds of goods
assume, for purposes of social rating or estimation, a fungible
character.(76) If a new kind of goods be produced or discovered, which
satisfies the same wants in a more complete manner than another, the
latter, although it has suffered no change, generally loses in the value
put upon it, especially if the new goods can be produced in any desired
quantity. An instance of this is the change effected in the value of the
dyers weed, woad, by the introduction of indigo.
Things present in quantities greater than the amount necessary to supply
the want they satisfy, preserve their full value in use, to the limit of
that want, after which they are simply an element of possible future
value, dependent on an increase of the want; but they have no value for
present use.(77)
The economic valuation of goods, however, is by no means exhausted, so far
as the isolated individual housekeeper is concerned, by the mere
establishing of its value in use. As the systematic effort of every
rational individual in his household management is directed towards the
obtaining, by a minimum of sacrifice of pleasure and energy, a maximum
satisfaction of his wants, even an Adam or a Crusoe is, in his economy,
compelled to estimate not only what the goods to be acquired accomplish
(value in use) but also what they will cost—cost-value. Even the most
indispensable kind of goods, for instance atmospheric air, is considered
to have no value, when it can be obtained in sufficient quantity, without
any sacrifice whatever.(78)
Section V.
Value.—Value In Exchange.
The value in exchange of goods, or the quality which makes them
exchangeable against other goods, is based on a combination of their value
in use with their cost-value, such as men in their intercourse with one
another will make.(79) Without value in use, value in exchange(80) is
unthinkable.
But there are many, and even indispensable goods which are not at all
susceptible of being exchanged; for instance, the light and heat of the
sun, the open sea etc.(81) Other goods, although capable of being
exchanged, have no value in exchange, because they exist in
superabundance, and may be obtained by everyone, without trouble and
without reward; for instance, drinking-water in most places, ice in
winter, and wood in the primeval forest.(82) Moreover, the idea of such
“free goods” is in great part relative. The water of a river may, for
drinking purposes, be “free” goods, and yet, for purposes of irrigation,
have great value in exchange. (_John Stuart Mill_).
But, goods, to obtain value in exchange, must, in addition to their value
in use, a value which must be recognized(83) by a certain number of
persons, at least, have the capacity of becoming the exclusive property of
some one individual, and therefore of being alienated or transferred; and
this alienation or transfer must be desired because of the difficulty to
become possessed of them in any other way.(84)
Section VI.
Value.—Alleged Contradiction Between Value In Use And Value In Exchange.
Recent, and especially socialistic,(85) writers have alluded to the great
“contradiction” between value in use and value in exchange. This
contradiction, however, vanishes when the above idea of economy, and the
two sides or aspects, which economic value presents, are kept steadily in
view. It is said, for instance, that a pound of gold has a much greater
value in exchange than a pound of iron; while the value in use of iron, is
incomparably greater than that of gold. I question this latter statement.
True it is, that the need of iron is much more universal and urgent than
the need of gold. On the other hand, a pound of gold yields satisfaction
to the want of that metal, much greater than is yielded by a pound of
iron, to the want of iron. We may speak of a contradiction between value
in use and value in exchange, at the farthest, only in case the existing
quantity of an article in trade, which can be done without, is not
estimated correspondingly lower than the whole existing supply of a thing
which is indispensable. But this is a case which cannot often occur. When,
for instance, wheat is very dear, as in years of scarcity, people prefer
to pay a very high price for it rather than to dispense, even in part,
with its use; and so of all the necessaries of life. As people progress in
economic culture, they become more expert in adapting the value in
exchange of related goods, not only to their cost-value, but also to their
value in use.(86)(87)
The lower the state of a nation’s economy, the more isolated men live from
one another, the greater is the prominence given by them to value in use,
as compared with value in exchange, a fact which makes a valuation of
resources, which shall be universally applicable, a more difficult
matter.(88)(89)(90)
Section VII.
Resources Or Means (Vermögen).
_Resources_, or _means_, in the sense in which we here use the term, are
the aggregate of economic goods owned by a physical or legal person, after
deduction is made of the person’s debts, and all valuable and rightful
claims have been added.(91) Hence, there are private resources,
corporative resources, municipal resources, etc., state resources,
national resources and the world’s resources. In estimating the resources
of a whole people, it is, of course, necessary to make deduction of the
debts due by the individual members of the nation to their fellow
countrymen.
Section VIII.
Valuation Of Resources.
It has often been made a question, whether the valuation of resources
should be based on the value in use, or the value in exchange of their
constituent parts.(92) The latter has, of course, no interest, except in
so far as we are concerned with the possibility of obtaining the control
of part of the resources, or means, of another, by the surrender of a part
of one’s own goods. In estimating the value of private resources, which
require to be made continually an object of trade, this point is, of
course, of the greatest importance. If certain of their component
elements, lands, for instance, belonging to a _fidei commissum_, are
incapable of entering immediately into the market, at least the revenue
they yield is measured by its value in exchange.
It is quite otherwise, even with the resources of a whole nation. Such
resources are, evidently, much more independent, and have much less need
of being exchanged against their equals, than private resources. The
foreign commerce, of the greatest and most advanced nations, has,
hitherto, been but a small quota of their internal commerce.(93) A
valuation, therefore, based on value in exchange, however interesting it
might be to enable us to determine how property is shared by the different
classes and persons that compose the nation, would afford but little
information concerning the absolute amount of the national wealth. This,
of course, applies in a much higher degree to the resources of the whole
world.
If, now, we were to estimate the resources of an entire people, or even of
the world, by summing up the value in exchange of their several component
parts, many very important elements would be left out of the account
entirely; as for instance, harbors, navigable streams, numberless
relations which have, indeed, no value in exchange whatever, but which are
of the highest importance, because promotive of the economy of the nation.
The same may be said of made roads of every description, the
politico-economical value of which may be much greater than the value in
exchange of their stock, than their cost of production etc. The increase
of the value in exchange of any of the branches of the resources of a
physical or legal person contributes towards really enriching the nation
or the world, only in case that the increased value in exchange is based
on an increased utility in quality or quantity. Should an earthquake
suddenly dry up a number of our springs, and thus give value in exchange
to the drinking water from the remaining ones, we should, indeed, witness
the introduction of a new object into the list of exchangeable goods; the
owners of springs would be able to command a larger portion of the
national resources, but at the expense of the rest of the population; and
the whole country would have become poorer in goods by the catastrophe.
Even the value in exchange of the national resources would not be
increased; for all other goods, which, hitherto, as compared with water,
had an unlimited capacity for exchange, would lose just as much of that
capacity as water had gained, as compared with them.(94) On the other
hand, if a new mineral spring should be discovered, the great value in use
of the water of which gave it value in exchange, the resources of the
nation would be really increased, not only in point of utility, but in
exchange value; for no other goods, formerly known, would, in consequence
of the discovery, lose in their exchange power.(95)
Section IX.
Wealth.
The possession of large and also of potentially lasting resources;
objectively, such resources themselves, we call wealth. But it must be
large in a two-fold sense; large as compared with the rational wants of
its possessor, and large, also, as compared with the resources of other
people, especially with the resources of those in the same condition of
life. To be called rich, it is not enough “to have a sufficiency,” (the
individual side); it is necessary to have more than others.(96) If all men
were possessed of a great deal, but all of an exactly equal amount, each
would be compelled, it may be conjectured, to be his own chimney-sweep,
his own scavenger and “boot-black.” And how could anyone, then, be
properly called wealthy? This is the social side of the idea of
wealth.(97) Hence, a person, with the same resources, might be very
wealthy in a provincial town, while, in the capital, he could enjoy only
moderate comfort.(98)
Section X.
Wealth.—Signs Of National Wealth.
We should have a very imperfect idea of the wealth of a people (§ 8) if we
should estimate it at the value in exchange of the sum(99)-total of the
component parts of the national resources. By the following signs,
however, an approximative notion of the value in use of the resources of a
nation may be obtained:
A. When, even the lower classes, who compose everywhere the greatest
portion of the people, are comfortable, in a condition worthy of human
beings. Thus, C. Dupin is surprised at the great quantities of meat,
butter, cheese and tea entered on the accounts of the poor-houses in
England, and the great care taken to have these of the best quality.(100)
A good symptom of such a state of things is a high average duration of
human life, especially when there is a relatively large number of births.
(§ 246.)
B. When a considerable outlay, devoted to the satisfaction of the more
refined wants, is voluntarily made, and by those only possessed of a
proper economic sense. Thus, in England, the various mission, bible, and
tract societies had, in 1841, an aggregate income of £630,000. The
expeditions in search of Franklin cost over a million pounds sterling. The
state outlay also belongs to this category, provided, that taxes are
collected and loans obtained, without any noticeable oppression. The sum
of 20,000,000 pounds sterling, voted, in 1833, by the British Parliament
for the abolition of slavery, is one of the happiest signs of the national
wealth of England.(101)
C. A large number of valuable buildings, and permanent improvements; for
instance, roads of every description, works for purposes of irrigation and
drainage. Thus, in London, from September, 1843, to September, 1845, there
were constructed squares and streets with an aggregate length of 11.1
geographical miles. The number of newly built houses in London, between
1843 and 1847, was nearly 27,000. And so, in England and Wales there are
492 geographical miles of navigable canals, while their navigable rivers
are estimated to have a length of only 449 miles. The number of miles of
railroad, in the British Empire, in 1865, was 2,897 geographical miles,
and they cost 459 million of pounds; in 1870, it was 3,270 geographical
miles, at an aggregate cost of 650 millions sterling.
D. The frequent occurrence of heavy commercial payments, which finds
expression especially in the magnitude and costliness of the most usual
medium of exchange. Thus, all payments are made in England in paper (for
sums of at least five pounds sterling) or in gold coin. Silver is used
only as small change, like copper in most other countries. (_Infra_, §
118, seq.)(102)
E. Frequent loans to foreign nations. Hence, Storch divides all countries
into borrowing or poor countries, loaning or rich countries, and
independent countries which hold a middle place between the two
former.(103)
Section XI.
Of Economy (Husbandry).
All normal economy(104) (husbandry) aims at securing a maximum of personal
advantage with a minimum of cost or outlay.(105) And there are always two
intellectual incentives at the foundation of this economy. There is,
first, self-interest, the positive manifestation of which is the effort to
acquire as much of the world’s goods as possible, and the negative
expression of which, the effort to lose as little of them as
possible—acquisitiveness—saving. Self-interest, losing its moral, and
assuming a guilty, character, degenerates into egotism; acquisitiveness,
into covetousness; and the disposition to save, into avarice—the
_solipsismus_ of Kant. The incentive to ameliorate one’s condition is
common to all men, no matter how varied the form or different the
intensity of its manifestation. It guides us all from the cradle to the
grave. It may be restricted within certain limits, but never entirely
extinguished. It is, in the domain of economy, what the instinct of
self-preservation is to our physical existence, a powerful principle of
creation, preservation and of renewed life (I. Thessal., 4, 11,
seq.).(106) Then there is the incentive of the demand of God’s voice
within us, the voice of conscience, whether we call it, in philosophic
outline “the adumbration of the ideas of equity, right, benevolence, of
perfection and inner freedom,” or, framing our lives in accordance with
them, the striving after the Kingdom of God.(107) It matters not, how much
the image of God may have been disfigured in most men, there is no one in
whom the longing for it has so far disappeared as to leave no trace
behind. This puts bounds to our self-interest, and transmutes it into an
earthly means to enable us to approximate to an eternal ideal.
As, in the structure of the world, the apparently opposing tendencies of
the centrifugal and centripetal forces produce the harmony of the spheres,
so, in the social life of man, self-interest and conscience produce in him
the feeling for the common good.(108) This sentiment of the common
interest is the foundation on which rise in successive gradation, the life
of the family, of the community, of the nation and of humanity, the last
of which should be coincident with the life of the Church. It, alone, can
realize the kingdom of heaven on earth. Through this sentiment alone can
religion be made active and moral. Only through it, can self-interest be
made really sure and always to the purpose. Even the most calculating mind
must acknowledge, that numberless institutions, relations etc., are useful
and even necessary to many individuals, which can be established or
maintained only from a sense of the general welfare, for the reason that
no one individual could make the sacrifice required to establish or
maintain them. And so, since commerce has wrought the interests of all men
into one great piece of net-work, the best means of obtaining wherewith to
satisfy our own wants is to help others satisfy theirs. Self-interest
causes every one to choose the course in life in which he shall meet with
the least competition and the most abundant patronage; in other words,
that which answers to the most pressing and least satisfied want of the
community. As a rule, the physician who cures the greatest number of
patients with the greatest skill, and the manufacturer who produces the
best goods cheapest, will grow to be the richest. It is, moreover, easy to
see that, according as the circle of common interests grows smaller, it
approximates to self-interest; and to “the Kingdom of God”(109) as it
grows larger. And yet, all these circles respectively condition one
another. Cosmopolitanism or church-zeal, without love of country;
patriotism, without fidelity to the community in which one lives, or love
of one’s family, are more than suspicious. The reverse is also true. This
is a chief connecting link between the great apparent opposites.(110)(111)
Section XII.
Economy.—Grades Of Economy.
Thanks to this feeling for the common weal, the eternal and destructive
war—the _bellum omnium contra omnes_—which an unscrupulous self-interest
would not fail to generate among men engaged in the isolated prosecution
of their own economic interests, ceases in the higher, well-ordered
organization(112) of society. On it are based the various forms of economy
in common: family-economy, corporation or association-economy, municipal
economy, and national economy.(113) And these forms of economy in common
are so essentially the condition and complement of individual economy,
that the latter, without them, could either not be maintained at all, or,
at least, only in the very lowest stage of civilization.
Although the higher science of Political Economy has, nearly always, been
conceived(114) as treating of the aggregate national activity of a people,
there have been many, recently, who consider Political Economy as no real
whole, but only as a mere abstraction. This is true, especially of many
unconditional free-trade theorizers, partly from a repugnance toward the
governmental guardianship of private businesses or economy. It is true,
also, of certain philosophers who consider the idea, “the people,” as
merely nominal.(115) There are, however, two things necessary to warrant
us to call a thing made up of a number of parts, one real whole: the parts
and the whole must have a reciprocal action upon one another, and the
whole, as such, must have a demonstrable action of its own. (_Drobisch._)
In this sense, “the people” is, unquestionably, a reality, and not alone
the individuals who constitute the “people.” Besides, it is truly said
that all husbandry or economy supposes a will (“systematized activity”
etc., _supra_, § 2). Such a will is ascribed to individuals, to legal
persons, to the state, but not, however, to “the people,” as a whole. But
this will need not be an entirely conscious one, as is plain from the case
of the less gifted and less cultured individuals engaged in household
economy. The systemization in the public economy of a people finds its
clearest expression in economic laws, and in the institutions of the
state. But it finds expression, also, without the intervention of the
state, in the laws established by use, and by the opinions of jurists or
courts, in community of speech, of customs and tastes etc.: things which
have an important economic meaning, which depend on the common nature of
the land, of race and history, and which influence the state, at least as
much as they are influenced by it.(116)(117)
The most that can be said, at present, so far as an economy of mankind, or
a world-economy, is concerned, is, that it may be shown that important
preparations have been made for it. We are approaching more nearly to it
by the ways of the more and more cosmopolitan character of science, the
increasing international coöperation of labor, the improvement in the
means of transportation, growing emigration, the greater love of peace,
and the greater toleration of nations etc.
Section XIII.
Political Economy.—The Economic Organism.
The idea conveyed by the word _organism_, is doubtless, one of the most
obscure of all ideas; and I am so far from desiring to explain(118) by
that idea, the meaning of public or national economy, that I would only
use the word _organism_ as the shortest and most familiar expression of a
number of problems, which it is the purpose of the following investigation
to solve.
There are two points, especially, of importance here. In the motion of any
machine, it is possible to distinguish with the utmost accuracy, between
the cause and the effect of the motion: the blowing of the wind, for
instance, is simply and purely, the cause of the friction of the
mill-stones in a wind-mill, and is not in the least influenced or
conditioned by the latter. But, in the public economy of every people,
patient thought soon shows the observer, that the most important
simultaneous events or phenomena mutually condition one another. Thus, a
flourishing state of agriculture is impossible without flourishing
industries; but, conversely, the prosperity of the latter supposes the
prosperity of the former, as a condition precedent. It is as in the human
body. The motions of respiration are produced by the action of the spinal
cord; and the spinal cord, in turn, continues to work only through the
blood, that is, by the help of respiration. In all cases like this, we are
forced, when accounting for phenomena, to move about in a circle, unless
we admit the existence of an organic life, of which every individual fact
is only the manifestation.(119)(120)
It is, also, undeniable, that human insight into the operation and utility
of a machine must always precede the existence of the machine itself. This
human insight is parent to the plan, and the plan, in turn, is parent to
the machine. The very reverse of this is true in the case of organisms,
those “divine machines” as Leibnitz called them. Men had digested food and
reproduced their kind, thousands of years before physiologists had
attained to a true theory of digestion or reproduction. I do not, indeed,
by any means, pretend, that the public economy of nations is governed by
natural necessity, in the same degree, as for instance, the human body. We
shall find, however, that the minute arbitrary variations usual here and
there in the course of its development, generally compensate for one
another, in accordance with the law of large numbers. Here, too, we find
harmonies, frequently of wonderful beauty, which existed long before any
one dreamt of them; innumerable _natural laws_,(121) whose operation does
not depend on their recognition by individuals, and, over which, only he
can obtain power who has learned to obey them. (_Bacon_)(122)(123)(124)
But it should never be lost sight of, that the natural laws governing the
public economy of a people, like those of the human mind, are
distinguished in one very essential point from those of the material
world. They have to do with free rational beings, who, because they are
thus free and rational, are responsible to God and their conscience, and
constitute in their aggregate a species capable of progress.
Section XIV.
Origin Of A Nation’s Economy.
The public economy of a people has its origin simultaneously with the
people. It is neither the invention of man nor the revelation of God. It
is the natural product of the faculties and propensities which make man
man.(125) Just as it may be shown, that the family which lives isolated
from all others, contains, in itself, the germs of all political
organization,(126) so may it be demonstrated, that every independent
household management contains the germs of all politico-economical
activity. The public economy of a nation grows with the nation. With the
nation, it blooms and ripens. Its season of blossoming and of maturity is
the period of its greatest strength, and, at the same time, of the most
perfect development of all its more important organs.(127) In respect to
it, the economic endeavors of any epoch may be said to be represented by
two great parties, the one progressive, the other, conservative. The
former would hasten the period of the nation’s richest and most varied
development, the latter postpone its departure as long as possible; and
hence it comes, that a people’s economic decline is sometimes taken for
progress, by the former class, and their progress for decline, by the
latter. As a rule, the union and equilibrium of these parties are wont to
be the greatest at the period of maturity, because, then, intelligence and
the spirit of sacrifice for the common good are most general.(128)
Finally, the public economy of a nation declines with the people.
(_Infra_, § 263 ff.)
Section XV.
Diseases Of The Social Organism.
If the public economy of a people be an organism, we must expect to find
that the perturbations, which affect it, present some analogies to the
diseases of the body physical. We may, therefore, hope to learn much that
may be of use in practice, from the tried methods of medicine.(129) In the
diseases of the body economic, it is necessary to distinguish accurately,
between the nature of the disease and its external symptoms, although it
may be necessary to combat the latter directly, and not merely with a view
to alleviation. Following the example of the physician, we should
particularly direct our attention to the curative method which nature
itself would pursue, were art not to intervene. “The curative power of
nature is no peculiar power; it is the result of a series of happy
adjustments, by means of which the morbid perturbation itself sets in
motion the springs which may either destroy the evil or paralyze its
action. It is, in fact, nothing but the original power which formed the
body and preserves its life in contact with the external causes of
perturbation and the internal disorder provoked by these causes.”
(_Ruete._)
Chapter II.
Position Of Political Economy In The Circle Of Related Sciences.
Section XVI.
Political Or National Economy.
By the science of national,(130) or Political Economy, we understand the
science which has to do with the laws of the development of the economy of
a nation, or with its economic national life. (Philosophy of the history
of Political Economy, according to von Mangoldt.) Like all the political
sciences, or sciences of _national life_, it is concerned, on the one
hand, with the consideration of the individual man, and on the other, it
extends its investigations to the whole of human kind.(131)
National life, like all life, is a whole, the various phenomena of which
are most intimately connected with one another. Hence it is, that to
understand one side of it scientifically, it is necessary to know all its
sides. But, especially, is it necessary to fix one’s attention on the
following seven: language, religion, art, science, law, the state and
economy.(132) Without language, all higher mental activity is unthinkable;
without religion, all else would lose its firmest foundation and highest
aim. Through art, alone, do all these sides attain to beauty; through
science, alone, to clearness. Law arises, the moment conflicts of will
become inevitable and an adjustment is desired. The state has to do with
them, in so far as they have any external force or validity. Indeed, there
is no human relation, not even the highest and the sweetest, but has its
economic interests. It is, therefore, natural, that each of the sciences
which relate to these various regions of human life should, in part,
presuppose all others, and, in part, serve as a basis for them.(133)
But in the midst of this universal relationship, it is easy to see that
law, the state and economy constitute a family, as it were apart and more
closely connected. (The social sciences, in the narrower sense of the
expression.)
They are confined almost exclusively to what Schleiermacher has called
“effective action” (_wirksame Handeln_), while art and science belong
almost entirely to the “action of representation” (_darstellenden
Handeln_); and religion and language combine both kinds. Law, the state,
and economy too, have their roots so deep in the physical and intellectual
imperfection of man, that we can scarcely imagine their continuance beyond
his life on earth (Gospel of Matthew, 22, 30). But within these limits,
their several provinces and the subjects with which they are concerned are
almost coincident. They only consider these from different points of view:
the science of politics from that of sovereignty; the science of Political
Economy from that of the satisfaction of the requirement of external goods
by the people; the science of law from that of the prevention or the
peaceable adjustment of conflicts of will. As every economic act,
consciously or unconsciously, supposes forms of law, so, by far the
greater number of the laws relating to rights, and the greater number of
judgments in the matter of rights, contain an economic element. In
numberless cases, the science of law gives us only the external _how_; the
deeper _why_ is revealed to us by the science of Political
Economy.(134)(135) And, as to the state, who, for instance, can appreciate
the political significance of a nobility, without understanding the
economic character of rent, and of the possession of large landed estates?
Who can politically appreciate the inferior classes of society, unless
initiated into a knowledge of the laws that govern wages and population?
It were much easier to cultivate psychology without physiology! “The state
is society protected by force” (_Herbart_). There are two bases to all
material power:(136) wealth and warlike ability (χρήματα—ναυτικά,
according to Thucydides); and how much the latter has need of the former
is well expressed by the familiar saying of Montecuccoli: “Money is not
only the first, but the second and third condition of war.”(137)
Frederick the Great calls finance the pulse of the state, and Richelieu,
the point of support which Archimedes was in search of, to move the world.
In all modern nations, the history of the debates on the raising of
revenue and of the passing of budgets is, at the same time, the history of
parliamentary life; and most great revolutions, the Reformation of the
sixteenth century not excepted, if not caused have been promoted, by
financial embarrassment.
Section XVII.
Sciences Relating To National Life.—The Science Of Public Economy.—The
Science Of Finance.
If, by the public economy of a nation, we understand economic legislation
and the governmental guidance or direction of the economy of private
persons,(138) the science of public economy becomes, so far as its form is
concerned, a branch of political science, while as to its matter, its
subject is almost coincident with that of Political Economy. Hence it is,
that so many writers use the terms public economy, or the economy of the
state (_Staatswirthschaft_), and National Economy (_Volkswirthschaft_), as
synonymous.(139) The hypothesis, in accordance with which, this science
should discard all consideration of the state, or should refuse to
presuppose its formation,(140) would lead us into an ideal region,
difficult to define, probably entirely impossible, and inaccessible to
experience.
Just as clear, is the close connection between politics and Political
Economy, in the case of the science of finance, or of the science of
governmental house-keeping, otherwise the administration of public
affairs. The latter, evidently, so far as its end is concerned, belongs to
politics, but so far as the means to that end are concerned, to National
Economy. As the physiologist cannot understand the action of the human
body, without understanding that of the head; so we would not be able to
grasp the organic whole of national economy, if we were to leave the
state, the greatest economy of all, the one which uninterruptedly and
irresistibly acts on all others, out of consideration.(141)
By the term _police_, we mean the state power whose office it is, without
mediation, to prevent all disturbances of external order among the
people.(142) It may extend its action into all the domains of national
life mentioned above, whenever external order is there threatened, or
calls for protection; but its action is important especially in the
domains of law and economy. The science of the _police power_, therefore,
of all those doctrines resulting from investigation into national life,
takes up only one phase of each of them; and the phases of doctrine thus
taken up, it combines into a whole, for practical ends. Its relation to
those sciences is like that of surgery to the medical sciences, or like
the science of legal procedure to the science of law.
Section XVIII.
Sciences Relating To National Life.—Statistics.
Statistics we call the picture or representation of social life at given
periods of time, and especially at the present time, drawn on a scale in
accordance with the laws of development discovered by means of the
theoretical sciences above named; as it were, a section through the
stream. (_Schlözer_ calls them: history standing still.)(143) Statistics,
as thus defined, are as far removed from saying too much as from saying
too little. To give a complete tableau of their object, statistics should,
of course, take in the life of a people, in all its aspects. But they
should look upon such facts only as their own property, the meaning of
which they are able to understand; that is, such only as can be ranged
under known laws of development. Unintelligible facts are collected only
in the hope of penetrating into their meaning in the future, by comparing
them with one another. In the meantime, they are to the statistician only
what unfinished experiments are to the investigator of nature.
The view is daily gaining ground, that statistics should be
occupied—without, however, confining themselves to them—with present
facts, with “facts affecting society and the state, which are susceptible
of being expressed in figures.”(144) The more deceptive the immediate
observation of an individual, isolated fact is, in cases where a great
number of simultaneous or scattered individual isolated facts of national
life should be observed, the more important it is to discover proper
numerical relations, by noting all the like acts or experiences of men,
the time and place in question, and the relation of the aggregate of these
phenomena, to the sum-total of the population, or to the sum-total of
corresponding phenomena in other places. When this is done, and the facts
are completely enumerated and correctly recorded, there is no danger of
subjective error. And this species of “political and social measuring,” as
Hildebrand calls it, may be applied, not only to quantities, but to all
qualities accessible to the observation of the senses; since the
individual or isolated qualities of the things enumerated, may be again
made objects of enumeration. Without doubt, this mode of numerical
procedure is the most perfect for all those divisions of statistics in
which it can be followed; and hence, it should be our endeavor to make the
numerical side of statistics as comprehensive as possible. But, one side
of a science is not a science itself. As there is no natural science
proper called microscopy, embracing all the observations made by means of
the microscope, so care should be taken not to deduce the principle of a
science from the chief instrument it employs. There will always be many
and important facts in national life which can not be subjected to
numerical calculation, although they may be established with the usual
amount of historical certainty. Were statistics to be limited, in the
manner mentioned above, they would remain a collection of fragments, and
instead of being a science, properly so-called, become a method.(145)
Besides, it is evident, that, of statistics in general, economic
statistics constitute a chief part, and precisely the part most accessible
to numerical treatment. As these economic statistics need to be always
directed by the light of Political Economy, they also furnish it with rich
materials for the continuation of its structure, and for the strengthening
of such foundations as it already has. They, are, moreover, the
indispensable condition of the application of economic theorems to
practice.
Section XIX.
Private Economy—Cameralistic Science.
The meaning of the term cameralistic science (_Cameralwissenschaft_) can
be explained only by the history of the cameralistic system.(146) From the
end of the middle ages, we find, in most German countries, an institution
called the Council (_Kammer_) whose province it was to administer the
public domain, and to watch over regal rights. At first, a mere
governmental commission, it was not long before it developed into an
independent board. This change had taken place in Burgundy as early as the
year 1409. It was in that country that the emperor Maximilian became
acquainted with the institution; and by the erection of the aulic councils
at Innspruck and Vienna (1498 and 1501), he gave the principal impulse to
the imitation of it in Germany. As, at that time, the division of labor
was very little developed, and personal and collegial authority all the
more developed in consequence, it is easy to conceive that a great part of
all the new and rapidly increasing business of police administration was
confided to these councils. They were charged especially with what is
known to-day as economic police (_Wirthschaftspolizei_) and an important
part of the administration of justice, in its lower departments, was
turned over to their subordinates. The most eminent men who wrote, in the
seventeenth century, on cameralistic matters, laid great stress on the
point, that it was the duty of the aulic councils to entertain not only
fiscal questions, but that it was within their province also, to determine
questions of economic police.(147) The interest of absolute princes must
have greatly favored these cameralistic institutions, for they were in
their hands docile tools, which escaped the annoying intervention of the
states of their realms.
By degrees, the knowledge necessary to these council officials, and which
found no place in the lectures on law, were formed into a special body of
doctrine. After such men as Morhof and Thomasius had prepared the
way,(148) Frederick William I., himself a clever cameralist, and author of
the masterly financial system of Prussia, took the important step of
founding, at Halle and Frankfurt on the Oder, special chairs of economy
and cameralistic science; which, considering the time, were very ably
filled by Gasser and Dithmar. (1727.) There was thus formed in the German
universities a distinct school of cameralists, which, through Jung, Rössig
and Schmalz, reached to the nineteenth century. The term cameralistic
science, the creature of chance, was used, it must be said, with very
various limits to its meaning.(149)
However, Political Economy in Germany developed out of the science of law
and the cameralistic sciences, while in England and Italy it had its
origin chiefly in the study of questions of finance and foreign commerce.
Section XX.
Private Economy. (Continued.)
If we abstract from cameralistic science as it was understood in the last
century, what it has in common with all economy,(150) and therefore with
public economy, next that which belongs to the aggregate of governmental
economy, there remains only a number of rules, such as those which govern
the principal branches of private business, and which indicate how they
are to be carried on with the greatest advantage to those who engage in
them. Such are forest and rural economy, mining science, technology,
including architecture, and all that concerns founderies, and commercial
science. Now that the expression cameralistic science is altogether
obsolete, the aggregate of these might be designated by the name private
economy. Obviously, we should have here, neither a simple nor pure
science, but only a compilation of natural-philosophical and economic
lemmas. Thus, in agriculture, for instance, a knowledge of the different
kinds of soil, of the tillage of land, of the different plants and animals
etc., belongs to the domain of natural science; while all that relates to
the cost of production, the employment of capital, the wages of labor, the
exchange of products, net product and the price of land, are purely
politico-economical. The political economists also require a knowledge of
the natural side of the cameralistic sciences. Such a knowledge is
indispensable to every detailed and living theory, and especially to the
application of economic science to practice. The great difference lies in
this, that the cameralist interests himself in the production of material
goods for their own sake, while the political economist regards them only
in their relations to national life.(151)
It would seem, moreover, that political economists, especially in Germany,
have attached too much importance to putting formal bounds to their
special science. Why not rather follow the example of the students of
nature who care little whether this or that discovery belongs to physics
or chemistry, to astronomy or mathematics, provided, only, very many and
important discoveries are made?(152)
Section XXI.
What Political Economy Treats Of.
Political Economy treats chiefly of the material interests of nations. It
inquires how the various wants of the people of a country, especially
those of food, clothing, fuel, shelter, of the sexual instinct etc., may
be satisfied; how the satisfaction of these wants influences the aggregate
national life, and how in turn, they are influenced by the national life.
(Gospel of Matth., 4, 4.) This alone suffices to enable us to estimate the
importance of the science. The relation of virtue to wealth is likened by
Bacon to that of an army to its baggage. In Xenophon’s opinion, wealth is
really useful only to him who knows how to make a good use of it. From an
economic point of view, the happiest man is he who has accumulated most,
honorably, and used it best.(153) That, even in a material sense, the
intellect of a people is their most important element, is evident from the
example of the Chinese, who were so long acquainted with printing, powder,
and the mariner’s compass, without, by their means, attaining to
intelligent public opinion, forming a good army, or coming to an
understanding of the art of navigation, to any great extent.
The undervaluing of economic matters, for which ages of inferior
cultivation, our own middle ages for instance, are now praised and now
blamed, was really a rare exception even during these ages.(154) Other
kinds of acquisition and enjoyment then occupied the foreground; but there
never was a time, when gain and enjoyment in general were not favorite
objects of pursuit, and held in high esteem. The physical wants of
uncultured men cry out much louder than intellectual ones. (§ 2, 14.)(155)
On the other hand, in over-cultivated ages, when decay begins, an
over-estimation of material things is wont to become general.(156) The
mere servants of mammon, whether as political economists or as private
individuals, may see their depravity faithfully reflected in communism as
in a mirror. We should not overlook the fact that it is with whole nations
as with the individual man who amasses his own fortune. He reaches the
culminating point of his wealth generally after he has passed the prime of
life. The most flourishing period of a nation’s existence is wont just to
precede its decay, and to introduce it.(157) Hence, here nothing could be
more untrue, as Macchiavelli has remarked, than the general opinion that
money is the sinew of war.(158)
Chapter III.
The Methods Of Political Economy.
Section XXII.
Former Methods.
The methods(159) which would apply to any science of national life,
principles borrowed from any other science, are now generally looked upon
as obsolete. This is true, especially, of the theological method which
prevailed, almost exclusively during the middle ages,(160) and of the
juridical method of the seventeenth century.
It would be much more in harmony with the intellectual tendencies of the
time, to adopt a mathematical mode of treatment in Political Economy,
involving, as such a mode of treatment does, not the matter of the
science, but only a formal principle. That which is general in Political
Economy has, it must be acknowledged, much that is analogous to the
mathematical sciences. Like the latter, it swarms with abstractions.(161)
Just as there are, strictly speaking, no mathematical lines or points in
nature, and no mathematical lever, there is nowhere such a thing as
production or rent, entirely pure and simple. The mathematical laws of
motion operate in a hypothetical vacuum, and, where applied, are subjected
to important modifications, in consequence of atmospheric resistance.
Something similar is true of most of the laws of our science; as, for
instance, those in accordance with which the price of commodities is fixed
by the buyer and seller. It also, always supposes the parties to the
contract to be guided only by a sense of their own best interest, and not
to be influenced by secondary considerations. It is not, therefore, to be
wondered at, that many authors have endeavored to clothe the laws of
Political Economy in algebraic formulæ.(162) And, indeed, wherever
magnitudes and the relations of magnitudes to one another are treated of,
it must be possible to subject them to calculation. Herbart has shown that
this is so in the case of psychology;(163) and all the sciences which
treat of national life, especially our own, are psychological.(164) But
the advantages of the mathematical mode of expression diminish as the
facts to which it is applied become more complicated. This is true even in
the ordinary psychology of the individual. How much more, therefore, in
the portraying of national life! Here the algebraic formulæ would soon
become so complicated, as to make all further progress in the operation
next to impossible.(165) Their employment, especially in a science whose
sphere it is, at present, to increase the number of the facts observed, to
make them the object of exhaustive investigation, and vary the
combinations into which they may be made to enter, is a matter of great
difficulty, if not entirely impossible.(166) For, most assuredly, as our
science has to do with men, it must take them and treat them as they
actually are, moved at once by very different and non-economic motives,
belonging to an entirely definite people, state, age etc. The abstraction
according to which all men are by nature the same, different only in
consequence of a difference of education, position in life etc., all
equally well equipped, skillful and free in the matter of economic
production and consumption, is one which, as Ricardo and von Thünen have
shown, must pass as an indispensable stage in the preparatory labors of
political economists. It would be especially well, when an economic fact
is produced by the cooperation of many different factors, for the
investigator to mentally isolate the factor of which, for the time being,
he wishes to examine the peculiar nature. All other factors should, for a
time, be considered as not operating, and as unchangeable, and then the
question asked, What would be the effect of a change in the factor to be
examined, whether the change be occasioned by enlarging or diminishing it?
But it never should be lost sight of, that such a one is only an
abstraction after all, for which, not only in the transition to practice,
but even in finished theory, we must turn to the infinite variety of real
life.(167)
There are two important inquiries in all sciences whose subject matter is
national or social life: 1. What _is_? (What has been? How did it become
so? etc.) 2. What _should be_? The greater number of political economists
have confounded these questions one with the other, but not all to the
same extent.(168)
When a careful distinction is made between them, the contrast between the
(realistic) physiological or historical, and the idealistic methods is
brought out.(169)
Section XXIII.
The Idealistic Method.
Any one who has read a goodly number of idealistic works treating of
public economy (the state, law etc.) cannot have failed to be struck by
the enormous differences, and even contradictions, as to what theorizers
have considered desirable and necessary. There is scarcely an important
point which the highest authorities may not be cited for or against. We
must not close our eyes to this fact. “The giddiness that comes from
contemplating the depths of knowledge is the beginning of philosophy, as
the god Thaumas was, according to the fable, the father of Iris.”
(_Plato._) In a precisely similar manner, the student of public economy
(politics, the philosophy of law etc.) must familiarize himself with the
variations that have taken place in what men, at different periods of
history, have required of the state and public economy, until he is lost
in wonder at the contemplation.
Section XXIII.
The Idealistic Method. (Continued.)
It is impossible to fail to notice at once that those ideal descriptions
which have enjoyed great fame and exerted great influence, depart very
little from the real conditions of the public economy (of the state, law
etc.) surrounding their authors.(170) This is not mere chance. The power
of great theorizers, as, indeed, of all great men, lies, as a rule, in
this, that they satisfy the want of their own time to an unusual extent;
and it is the peculiar task of theorizers to give expression to this want
with scientific clearness, and to justify it with scientific depth. But
the real wants of a people will, in the long run, be satisfied in
life,(171) so far as this is possible to the moral imperfection of man. We
should at least be on our guard when we hear it said that whole nations
have been forced into an “unnatural” course by priests, tyrants and
cavilers. For, to leave human freedom and divine Providence out of
consideration entirely, how is such a thing possible? The supposed tyrants
are generally part and parcel of the people themselves; all their
resources are derived from the people. They must have been new
Archimedeses standing outside of their own world. (Compare, however,
_infra_, § 263.)
It is true, that if the result of the growth of generations be to
gradually produce a different people, these different men may require
different institutions. Then a struggle arises between the old and those
of the younger generation; the former wish to retain what has been tested
by time, the latter to seek for the satisfaction of their new wants by new
means. As the sea always oscillates between the flowing and ebbing of the
tides, so the life of nations, between periods of repose and of crisis:
periods of repose, when existing forms answer to the real substance of
things, and of crisis, when the changed substance or contents seeks to
build up a new form for itself. Such crises are called _reforms_ when they
are effected in a peaceful way, and in accordance with positive law. When
accomplished in violation of law, they are called revolutions.(172)
That every revolution, it matters not how great the need of the change
produced by it, is as such an enormous evil, a serious, and sometimes,
fatal disease of the body politic, is self-evident. The injury to morals
which the spectacle of victorious wrong almost always produces can be
healed, as a rule, only in the following generation. Where law has been
once trampled on, the “right of the stronger” will prevail; and the
stronger is, to some extent, the most unscrupulous and reckless in the
choice of the means to be employed. Hence, the well-known fact, that in
revolutionary times the worst so frequently remain the victors. The
counter-revolution which is wont to follow on the heels of revolution, and
with a corresponding violence, is a compensation only to the most
shortsighted. It allows the disease, the familiarizing of the people with
the infringement of law, to continue, until the hitherto sound parts are
attacked. Hence, a people should, if they would have it go well with them,
in the changes in the form of things which they make, take as their model
Time, whose reforms are the surest and most irresistible, but, at the same
time, as Bacon says, so gradual that they cannot be seen or observed at
any one moment. It is true, that, as all that is great is difficult, so
also is the carrying out of uninterrupted reform. Its carrying out,
indeed, supposes two things: a constitution so wisely planned as to keep
the doors open both to the disappearing institutions of the past and to
the coming institutions of the future; and, among all classes of the
people, a moral control of themselves, so absolute that, no matter what
the inconvenience, or how great the sacrifice, legal ways shall alone be
used. In this manner, two of the greatest and apparently most
contradictory wants of every legal or moral person, the want of
uninterrupted continuity and that of free development, may be satisfied.
Section XXV.
The Idealistic Method. (Continued.)
It is doubtless true that all economic laws, and all economic institutions
are made for the people, not the people for such laws and institutions.
Their mutability is, therefore, by no means such an evil as mankind should
endeavor to remove, but is wholesome and laudable, so far as it runs
parallel with the transformation of the people, and the changes which
their wants have undergone.(173) Hence, there is no reason why the most
various ideal systems should contradict one another. Any one of them may
be right, but, of course, only for one people and one age. In this case,
the only error would be, if they should claim to be universally
applicable. There can no more be an economic ideal adapted to the various
wants of every people, than a garment which should fit every individual.
The leading-strings of children and the staff of age would be great
annoyances to the man. “Reason becomes nonsense and beneficence a
torment.” Hence, whoever would elaborate the ideal of the best public
economy—and the greater number of political economists have really wished
to do this—should, if he would be perfectly true, and at the same time
practical, place in juxta position as many different ideals as there are
different types of people.(174) He would, moreover, have to revise his
work every few years; for, in proportion as a people change, and new wants
originate, the economic ideal suitable to them must change also. But it is
impossible to accomplish this on so large a scale. Besides, to appreciate
the present thus instantaneously, and to perfectly feel the pulse of time
thus uninterruptedly, requires a species of talent different from what
even the most distinguished scientists are wont to possess; talents of an
entirely practical nature, such as become a great minister of the interior
or of finance. And it is an acknowledged fact, that even the cleverest of
such practicioners, as the younger Pitt said of himself, generally feel
their way instinctively, and do not see it with the clearness necessary to
indicate it to others.
Section XXVI.
The Historical Method—The Anatomy And Physiology Of Public Economy.
We refuse entirely to lend ourselves in theory to the construction of such
ideal systems. Our aim is simply to describe man’s economic nature and
economic wants, to investigate the laws and the character of the
institutions which are adapted to the satisfaction of these wants, and the
greater or less amount of success by which they have been attended.(175)
Our task is, therefore, so to speak, the anatomy and physiology of social
or national economy!
These are matters to be found within the domain of reality, susceptible of
demonstration or refutation by the ordinary operations of science;
entirely true or entirely false, and, therefore, in the former case, not
liable to become obsolete. We proceed after the manner of the investigator
of nature. We, too, have our dissecting knife and microscope, and we have
an advantage over the student of nature in this, that the self-observation
of the body is exceedingly limited, while that of mind is almost
unlimited. There are other respects, however, in which he has the
advantage over us. When he wishes to study a given species, he may make a
hundred or a thousand experiments, and use a hundred or a thousand
individuals for his purpose. Hence, he can easily control each separate
observation, and distinguish the exception from the rule. But, how many
nations are there which we can make use of for purposes of comparison?
Their very fewness makes it all the more imperative to compare them all.
Doubtless, comparison cannot supply the place of observation; but
observation may be thus rendered more thorough, many-sided, and richer in
the number of its points of view. Interested alike in the differences and
resemblances, we must first form our rules from the latter, consider the
former as the exceptions, and then endeavor to explain them. (_Infra_, §
266).
Section XXVII.
Advantages Of The Historical Or Physiological Method.
The thorough application of this method will do away with a great number
of controversies on important questions.(176) Men are as far removed from
being devils as from being angels. We meet with few who are only guided by
ideal motives, but with few, also, who hearken only to the voice of
egotism, and care for nothing but themselves. It may, therefore, be
assumed, that any view current on certain tangible interests which concern
man very nearly, and which has been shared by great parties and even by
whole peoples for generations, is not based only on ignorance or a
perverse love of wrong. The error consists more frequently in applying
measures wholesome and even absolutely necessary under certain
circumstances, to circumstances entirely different. And here, a thorough
insight into the conditions of the measure suffices to compose the
differences between the two parties. Once the natural laws of Political
Economy are sufficiently known and recognized, all that is needed, in any
given instance, is more exact and reliable statistics of the fact
involved, to reconcile all party controversies on questions of the
politics of public economy, so far, at least, as these controversies arise
from a difference of opinion. It may be that science may never attain to
this, in consequence of the new problems which are ever arising and
demanding a solution. It may be, too, that in the greater number of party
controversies, the opposed purposes of the parties play a more important
part even than the opposed views. Be this as it may, it is necessary,
especially in an age as deeply agitated as our own, when every good
citizen is in duty bound to ally himself to party, that every honest
party-man should seek to secure, amid the ocean of ephemeral opinions, a
firm island of scientific truth, as universally recognized as truth as are
the principles of mathematical physics by physicians of the most various
schools.
Section XXVIII.
Advantages Of The Historical Method. (Continued.)
Another characteristic feature of the historical method is that it does
away with the feeling of self-sufficiency, and the braggadocio which cause
most men to ridicule what they do not understand, and the higher to look
down with contempt on lower civilizations. Whoever is acquainted with the
laws of the development of the plant, cannot fail to see in the seed the
germ of its growth, and in its flower, the herald of decay. If there were
inhabitants of the moon, and one of them should visit our earth, and find
children and grown people side by side, while ignorant of the laws of
human development, would he not look upon the most beautiful child as a
mere monster, with an enormous head, with arms and legs of stunted growth,
useless genitals, and destitute of reason? The folly of such a judgment
would be obvious to every one; and yet we meet with thousands like it on
the state and the public economy of nations when in lower stages of
civilization, and this, even among the most distinguished writers.(177)
We may, indeed, make a critical comparison of different forms, each of
which answers perfectly to its object or contents; but such a comparison
can possess historical objectivity, only when it is based on a correct
view of the peculiar course of development followed by the people in
question.
The forms of the period of maturity may be considered the most perfect;
earlier forms as the immature, and the later as those of the age of
decline.(178) But it is a matter of the greatest difficulty, accurately to
determine the culminating point of a people’s civilization. The old man
believes, as a rule, that the times are growing worse, because he is no
longer in a way to utilize them; the young man, as a rule, that they are
growing better, because he hopes to turn them to account. It is, however,
always a purely empirical question; and in the solution of it, the
observer’s eye may acquire a singular acuteness by the comparative study
of as many nations as possible, especially of those which have already
passed away.(179)
Could anyone contemplate the history of mankind as a a whole, of which the
histories of individual nations are but the parts, the successive steps in
the evolution of humanity would of course afford him a similar objective
rule for all these points in which whole peoples permanently differ from
one another.(180)
Section XXIX.
The Practical Character Of The Historical Method In Political Economy.
Before I close, I must refer to a possible objection which may be made to
historical or physiological Political Economy: that it may indeed be
taught, but that it cannot be a practical science. If it be assumed that
those principles only are practical, which may be applied immediately by
every reader, in practice, this work must disclaim all pretensions to that
title. I doubt very much if, in this sense, there is a single science
susceptible of a practical exposition.(181) Genuine practitioners, who
know life with its thousands of relations by experience, will be the first
to grant that such a collection of prescriptions, when the question is the
knowledge and guidance of men, would be misleading and dangerous in
proportion as such prescriptions were positive and apodictic, that is
non-practical and doctrinarian.
Our endeavor has been, not to write a practical book, but to train our
readers to be practical. To this end, we have sought to describe the laws
of nature which man cannot control, but, at most, only utilize. We call
the attention of the reader to the different points of view, from which
every economic fact must be observed, to do justice to every claim. We
would like to accustom the reader, when he is examining the most
insignificant politico-economical fact, never to lose sight of the whole,
not only of public economy but of national life. We are very strongly of
the opinion, that only he can form a correct judgment and defend his views
against all objections, on such questions as to where, how and when
certain liens and charges, monopolies, privileges, services etc., should
be abolished, who fully understands why they were once imposed or
introduced. Especially, do we not desire to impress a certain number of
rules of action on those who have confided themselves to our guidance,
after having first demonstrated their excellence. Our highest ambition is
to put our readers in a way to discover such rules of direction for
themselves, after they have conscientiously weighed all the facts,
untrammeled by any earthly authority whatever.(182)(183)
Book I.
THE PRODUCTION OF GOODS.
Chapter I.
Factors Of Production.
Section XXX.
Meaning Of Production.
To create new matter is more than it is given to man to do. Hence, by the
term production, in its widest sense, we mean simply the bringing forth of
new goods—the discovery of new utilities, the change or transformation of
already existing goods into new utilities,(184) the creation of means for
the satisfaction of human wants, out of the aggregate of matter originally
present in the world. (_Producere!_) We confine ourselves, however, in
this to economic goods, as defined in § 2. In a secondary and more limited
sense, production is an increase of resources, in so far as the goods
produced satisfy a greater human want, than those employed in the
production itself.(185)(186)(187)
It would, however, be an error to suppose, that the creation of certain
utilities for the producer himself, or for others, constitutes the only
end of economic production. The more perfect economic production becomes,
the greater grows the pleasure the producer feels in his products, which
pleasure is at once the effect and the cause of his success. Hence,
production is to a great extent its own end. That this is so in the case
of artists is well known. “If you want only progeny from her, a mortal can
beget them as well. Let him who rejoices in the goddess, not seek in her
the woman,” says Schiller. There is not a really clever workman but has
something artistic in his mode of production. And even the meanest
productive activity, provided it is neither over-driven nor misdirected,
must of itself exert a good influence on the physical and moral
development or preservation of the producer. An idle brain is the devil’s
workshop.(188)
Section XXXI.
The Factors Of Production.—External Nature.(189)
The division of natural forces which formerly obtained, into organic,
chemical and mechanical, is of no great importance in Political Economy.
The tendency is more and more to resolve organic forces partly into
chemical and partly into mechanical. Between mechanical and chemical
forces, again, the boundary is not fixed, heat being always capable of
producing motion, and motion always of producing heat. Hence, it is all
the more important for us to find a division of the economic gifts
(matter, forces(190) and relations) of external nature, into such as are
capable of acquiring exchange value, and such as are not. (See § 5.)
A. Those gifts of nature which, because they cannot be appropriated by any
one, or which at least are inexhaustible as compared with the wants of
man, and therefore never have a direct value in exchange, belong either to
the class of _free_ goods, in the fullest sense of the word, as, for
instance, sunlight and the atmosphere (_supra_, § 5);(191) or they
constitute, by reason of their peculiar and intransmissible connection
with the whole country, an essential element of the national resources.
Section XXXII.
External Nature.—The Sea.—Climate.
To the last category belongs, for instance, the sea, the only natural
boundary of a country, which from a military point of view, constitutes a
protection to it, without, at the same time, disturbing peaceful traffic.
(_Riedel._) Here, also belong ocean currents, especially when uniformly
supported by regular winds,(192) the ebb and flow of the tides, which
constitute a piece of commercial machinery of the very greatest
importance, particularly when they affect the waters of rivers to a great
distance.(193) In this age, when the love of travel is so great and so
universal, what prices are paid in many places by strangers for the beauty
of a landscape, to its owner.
Special mention should be here made of climate, and of its heat or
moisture. The lines called isothermal, that is, lines of equal annual
heat, are, therefore, of greatest importance to public economy, because
the “zones of production” depend mainly on them.(194) However, we are
concerned here, not only with the average temperature of the whole year,
but especially with the distribution of heat among the several parts of
the day and the different seasons of the year, and the maximum summer heat
and winter cold (the isothermal and iso-cheimenal lines). Coast lands are
wont to have a milder winter and a cooler summer than continental ones
with an equal average yearly heat. This produces a great difference in
vegetation, because there are a great many plants which can endure the
winter’s cold very well, but require a hot summer; and _vice versa_.(195)
Were it not for this fact, in connection with the winter-sleep of plants,
a large portion of the north would be entirely uninhabitable. Besides, the
temperature of a place does not depend exclusively on its latitude, or on
its height above the sea-level.(196) The humidity of the climate is, as a
rule, great in proportion to the quantity of water in its neighborhood,
and to the height of its temperature; although, for instance, in Europe,
the number of rainy days increases, the further we advance towards the
north.(197) Although the distance of a place from the equator and its
height above the level of the sea have, in many respects, a similar effect
(vertical, horizontal isothermal lines and zones of production),
mountainous regions are uniformly distinguished by a greater degree of
humidity, which makes them better adapted for pasturage and
forest-culture. But the flora of a locality, being the resultant of all
its conditions, affords us a much better criterion of the value of the
climate for economic purposes, than the most accurate thermometric
observations. Other things being equal, the productive force of nature
operates, doubtless, with most energy, in warm climates. The more remote a
country is from the equator, the more is its fertility confined to its
lowest parts.(198) Greater heat will, as a rule, ripen the same product
sooner, and thus permit the same land to be used several times in the same
year.(199) Each individual harvest, as a rule, is more abundant,(200) and
the products better in many respects. The fruit, for instance, and wine,
contain more sugar,(201) and oleaginous plants contain more oil. Lastly,
since nature in warm countries is so much more generous, it may be
utilized by man with less regard for consequences. There is less need of
extensive woods, of large winter supplies, especially for animals;(202)
fewer buildings are demanded, and there is also less demand for human and
brute labor, since the work of plowing, sowing etc., extends over a
greater portion of the year.(203) It is true, on the other hand, that also
the destructive force of nature is greater in warmer than in colder
countries. (§ 209.)(204)
Section XXXIII.
External Nature.—Gifts Of Nature With Value In Exchange.
B. Those gifts of external nature which may become objects of private
property, and at the same time possess sufficient relative scarcity to
give them value in exchange, are either movable, and exhaustible in a
given place, or firmly connected with the land. The first category
embraces, for instance, such wild animals and plants as serve some useful
purpose, minerals, above all, fossil combustible matter(205)—the “black
diamonds,” coal, of which, with its canals, Franklin said that it had made
England what it is. The economical effect of their moveable character is
best seen, when the use made of an ordinary stratum of coal is compared
with that of a protracted subterranean fire in a coal mine.(206) The
latter can be directly useful only to those in its immediate vicinity.
Every lower layer of the burning coal would be less useful. An increase of
its actual power by accumulation in time or place is scarcely possible. In
all these respects, the movable coal is incomparably better adapted to the
satisfaction of man’s wants. It may be said that the capacity of heat for
drying, distilling, melting and hardening purposes, of imparting rapid
motion to heavy objects by the production of confined steam, is, at least,
a thousand times as great when a thousand bushels of coal are consumed as
when one is consumed. In most cases even the concentration of a large
quantity of coal will increase, the result not only absolutely, but
relatively.(207)(208)
Section XXXIV.
External Nature. (Continued.)
The materials, forces and relations or conditions of external nature,
immovably connected with parts of the land, even when in themselves
exhaustless, either allow only of a definite amount of economic
utilization, as, for instance, the mechanical force of a given waterfall,
which can drive only a definite number of mills of a definite size;(209)
or their increased utilization is accompanied by difficulties which
increase with still greater rapidity. This last is the case, especially in
the employment of land for agricultural purposes. It is, according to
Senior, one of the four fundamental axioms of Political Economy, that
additional labor, spent on a given quantity of land, produces, as a rule,
a relatively smaller yield; assuming, of course, that the art of
agriculture remains the same. It is not possible to determine either
generally, or in particular cases, the precise point at which agriculture
should stop, to prevent relatively smaller returns from increased
expenditure of labor and capital. Improvements in the art of agriculture
may remove it a great distance. But, that there is such a point admits of
no doubt. No one will believe that an acre of land can be made to produce
a quantity of the means of subsistence sufficient to support all Europe,
no matter what the amount of seed used, or of manure etc. employed.(210)
This is most apparent in forest-economy, where the absolute increase of
the so-called wood-capital becomes, after a certain time, smaller from
year to year.(211)
Section XXXV.
External Nature.—Elements Of Agricultural Productiveness.
In treating of the agricultural productiveness of a piece of land, it is
necessary to distinguish three things,—its bearing-capacity, its capacity
for cultivation, and its direct capacity to afford food to plants.(212)
Plants grow by drawing a part of the elements which enter into their
composition from the atmosphere, and a part from the earth through the
agencies of sunlight and of water. While the air, the sun’s heat, and in
most parts of the world, water, are free and inexhaustible goods, the
earth’s supply of food for plants must be considered as analogous, so far
as its exhaustibility and capacity to be appropriated are concerned, to
the beds of coal and of ore etc. which occur in mining districts. This is
certainly true, with a few important differences, however, as for
instance, that, as a rule, it is impossible, except through the
cultivation of plants, to obtain from the earth the stores of plant food
which it contains;(213) and that it is possible to husbandry to replace
the portion of these stores taken from the earth by the harvest, through
the agency of manures.(214)
Incomparably more important in the economic valuation of a piece of land
is its capacity for cultivation, because this depends much less on the
good or bad quality of the husbandman’s art. I mean here the so-called
physical constitution of the vegetable soil; its water-holding power, its
consistency (light or heavy soil) on which the difficulty of working it
depends; its ability to dry, in a shorter or longer time, and its
accompanying diminution in volume; its ability to draw moisture from the
atmosphere and to absorb the various kinds of gases; its heat-absorbing
and heat-containing power (hot, warm and cold soils).(215) Much depends
here on the depth of the vegetable soil and on the constitution of the
sub-soil, which, for instance, when it is very permeable, improves a very
moist soil, but in the form of meadow iron-ore (_Wiesenerz_), works great
injury. The vertical form of the land is also a very important element in
estimating the natural fertility of the soil. In mountainous districts,
the quantity of land which can be used (and with what labor!) is wont to
be relatively smaller than in low lands. Hence it is, that the former
become too small for their inhabitants; who, therefore, swarm over the
plains lying before them either as settlers or conquerors.(216) In the
eastern hemisphere, the northern slopes of mountain regions are most
unfavorably situated, although the southern slopes are frequently
subjected to more trying and more sudden variations of thawing and
freezing weather.(217)
But all these more special qualities of the soil must be distinguished
from their general basis, the bearing or carrying capacity which land
possesses as a mere superficies, and which the most naked rock (Malta!),
and the bed of a flowing stream (the floating gardens of China!) possess
to some extent, since there is a possibility of establishing a
plant-feeding surface on them. This bearing capacity, which in most
instances is given only by nature, and which can be added to only to a
very limited extent and at great outlay, is wont, when the population is
very dense, to acquire considerable exchange value in the
vicinity.(218)(219)
Section XXXVI.
External Nature.—Further Divisions Of Nature’s Gifts.
The gifts of nature, we further divide into those which can be directly
enjoyed and those which are of use only indirectly, by facilitating
production. (Natural means of enjoyment,—means of acquisition.)(220) An
extreme superfluity of the former is as disastrous to civilization as a
too great scarcity of them. How simple the economy of a tropical country!
A banana field will support twenty-five times as many men as a wheat field
(_K. Ritter_); and with infinitely less labor; for all that is needed is
to cut the stems with their ripened fruit, to loosen the earth a little
and very superficially, when new stems shoot up.(221) At the base of the
mountains of Mexico, a father needs labor only two days in the week to
support his family. Hence, nothing so much excites the wonder of the
traveler there as the diminutiveness of the cultivated ground surrounding
each Indian hut.(222) But in these earthly paradises, where, as Byron
said, even bread is gathered like fruit, the powers of man slumber as
certainly as they grow torpid in polar deserts.(223) The sentence: “In the
sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread,” has been a blessing to mankind.
Athens was not only the literary and political, but also the economic
capital of Greece; and yet Attica was one of the most sterile countries in
the world.(224) Unfortunate Messina, on the other hand, was the most
fertile province of Greece. In modern times, no countries of equal extent
have produced as many great captains, statesmen, savants and artists as
Holland, whose securest portions are as unfertile as those which are
fertile are threatened by the sea. On the other hand, how lately and
imperfectly has the so-called black-earth of southern Russia fallen under
the influence of civilization!(225)
Section XXXVII.
External Nature.—The Geographical Character Of A Country.
The geographical character of a country is, as a rule,(226) most
intimately connected, not only with its flora and fauna, but also with the
character of its people. One of the crowning glories of the progress of
modern science is, that it has recognized anew the power of this wonderful
organism, and that it has made geography an explanatory medium between
nature and history. The conditions most favorable to the development of
civilization are found in a well developed country which slopes gradually
through a series of intermediate terraces from a mountain summit to a
plain; especially when they are connected with one another by a good
system of streams; since here the opposite peculiarities of the
populations of the highlands and coast-lands(227) tend to produce a
nationality both one and varied. Where the transitions are too abrupt, as
for instance, in New Holland, they easily impede inter-communication; and,
still more, where the several parts of the country are of very great
extent; as, for example, the desert of North Africa, the plateau of South
Africa or that of Central Asia. Europe is favored above all other parts of
the world by the happy combination of mountain and plain.(228) We might
pursue the parallel existing between the soil and the character of a
people into the minutest details, and discover, even in the difference
between Spanish, French, German and Hungarian wines, a reflection of the
different characters of the people.(229)
But whence is this? Can it be that dead nature has thus irresistibly
affected the living mind? We do not need to give a materialistic answer to
the question.(230) Almost every people has migrated at some period of its
existence. Urged on by their peculiar tastes and tendencies, they settled
in the places most in harmony with their character. A higher hand was over
them; one which, we should unreservedly trust, placed them in such
external circumstances as were most favorable to the development of all
their faculties.
But the influences of man on nature are no less notable than those of
nature upon man. The greater number of domestic animals and plants which
Europe possesses to-day, it has been obliged to introduce from other parts
of the globe.(231) In the interior of Gaul, the vine rarely ripened, at
the time of Christ.(232) On the other hand, Mesopotamia, formerly one of
the gardens of the world, is now covered with dried-up canals, filled a
little below the surface with heaps of brick and broken vases, the remains
and other vestiges of a once dense population. Its former rich alluvial
soil, now almost calcined, produces at present scarcely anything except a
few saline plants, mimosas etc.(233) The higher the civilization of a
people, the less does it depend on the nature of the country.
Section XXXVIII.
Of Labor.—Divisions Of Labor.
Man’s capacity for most economic labor is so closely connected with the
exquisite articulation of the human hand, that Buffon could say without
exaggeration that reason and the hand made man man.(234) But it is true of
economic labor, as of all other labor, that it is more efficient in
proportion as mind predominates over matter.
The best division of economic labor is the following:(235)
A. Discoveries and inventions.(236)
B. Occupation of the spontaneous gifts of nature, as, for instance, of
wild plants, wild animals, an
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