of Commerce and Theory of Taxes,' for the instruction of the heir to the throne. He found, however, that his principles were not adapted for the shelter of royal patronage; and he could have had few less promising pupils for the reception of new ideas. Tucker, however, pursued his studies; and Warburton spitefully said of him that the Dean's trade was his religion, and religion his trade. There was enough truth in the epigram to make it stinging, but there seems to have been nothing sordid in Tucker's character. If his religion was not of the most spiritual kind, he was at least honest and independent. Objecting to North's plan for raising an American revenue, he says, in a pamphlet addressed to Burke, 'I trust you will have more generosity than to tell the Prime Minister that this is my opinion; lest he should deny me a bishopric, which you say I am aiming at; and which certainly is not likely to be obtained by this mode of proceeding.'1 Burke's insinuation,2 indeed, seems to have been rather unjust; for Tucker's arguments exposed him to the contempt of Johnson,3 as decidedly as they brought him into conflict with Franklin, Priestley, and Burke himself. Adopting in politics Johnson's sound Tory view, and bitterly ridiculing the rights of man, he agreed on the other hand with Tom Paine's revolutionary view that America ought to be at once declared independent. The consummation, indeed, which the Americans regarded as a privilege to be won was regarded by him as a punishment to be inflicted. The effect of casting off the colonists would be to reduce them to the end of time to a set of little commonwealths and principalities more engaged in internal disputes than in foreign wars. His argument, in fact, is given in a single phrase, which has since become proverbial. What are we to gain, he asks, by conquering America? Not an increase in trade; that is impossible; for a shopkeeper will never get the more custom by beating his customers, and what is true of a shopkeeper is true also of a shopkeeping nation.' 5 A parallel argument appears in Adam Smith. 'To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers may, at first sight, appear a project fit only for a 'Letter to Burke,' p. 52. 2 Burke's Works, ii. 413. Johnson, viii. 200. Tucker's Works, iii. 119. nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers, though extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers.'! Tucker, indeed, was rather too much of the shopkeeper; though shrewd enough to see and to expose with great clearness the folly of the war, even when regarded from that point of view. A war for commerce between different parts of the same empire was as absurd as a war between Manchester and Norwich, and he declared that our posterity may regard the present madness of going to war for the sake of trade, riches, or dominion, with the same eye of astonishment and pity that we see the madness of our forefathers in fighting under the peaceful Cross to recover the Holy Land.' Our trade will be carried on just so long as we can offer the Americans the best market, and no longer, and will therefore be independent of political connection. He answers the taunt about trade and religion by the very fair argument that a system of universal commerce is the plain teaching of the divine constitution of the world.5 Almighty Providence has made different nations to supply each other's wants instead of cutting each other's throats; and, therefore, to preach Free Trade is to preach pure Christianity. 18. Tucker is everywhere a shrewd writer, and he discusses many economical problems in the same general spirit. He is, indeed, rather intricate in his reasoning, and a hot-headed conservatism does not blend very felicitously with his commercial liberalism. He blunders a good deal in his theories about population, regarding an increase of numbers as the proper end of a statesman-to be pursued by such doubtful methods as a tax upon bachelors-and emigration as simply a pernicious drain. But he is full of acute remarks, and may be credited with the rare glory of having made a political prophecy which was actually fulfilled. In half a century, he says, writing in 1774, two great and right measures will have been adopted-a separation from America and a union with Ireland;' and perhaps that which happens to be first accom 1 Wealth of Nations,' i. 276. 2 Tucker's Works, ii. 68. • Ib. ii. 89.1 + Ib. ii. 200. 5 See 'Two Sermons.' plished 'will greatly accelerate the accomplishment of the other.' ' Tucker stood too much apart from all parties to receive much credit for his perspicuity; but he lived long enough to see one prediction verified and the other on the verge of verification. 19. An elaborate 'Enquiry concerning the Principles of Political Economy' (1766), by Sir James Steuart, requires a word of recognition, as probably the most elaborate attempt which had hitherto been made to give a systematic account of economical principles. Steuart is a candid, patient, and original thinker; on some topics, such as population, he anticipates later writers; and he is not wanting in logical ingenuity. On the other hand, his style is awkward and his method intricate. He becomes hopelessly confused by the complexity of his subject-matter; and argues himself into elaborate blunders in attempting to refute Hume's lucid and satisfactory account of money and the balance of trade. He is, therefore, amongst the most tiresome individuals of that most tiresome of all literary species- the inferior political economists. He is interesting only as a product of the two chief schools of economical speculation. Having been more or less involved in the rebellion of 1745, he was forced to pass many years in France and elsewhere. He employed himself in studying social questions, and was obviously much impressed by the French writers. From them he learnt to take a wider view of the study than was common amongst the English rivals, and to go beyond questions of trade into more important questions of social welfare. On the other hand, instead of imitating their logical simplicity, or adopting their conception of a fixed social order, he exaggerates the ordinary complexity of the mercantile theories, and believes implicitly in the indefinite modifiability of mankind. The 'statesman,' according to him, is not only to direct hither and thither the flow of commerce according to very erroneous principles, but to mould the character and regulate the social organisation of his subjects. Thus, though he breaks ground upon many important questions, he rather perplexes than Tucker's Works, ii. 214. 2 E.g. Works, i. 24. 'Thus the generative faculty resembles a spring loaded with a weight, which always exerts itself in proportion to the diminution of resistance,' &c. See also i. 201, 208, &c. clears the subject; and we may pass, without further notice of his conclusions, to the school from which he, like Adam Smith, received a powerful impulse. III. THE FRENCH ECONOMISTS. 20. Writings, such as those which I have noticed, show that the simple principle of Free Trade lay but one degree removed from the sight of unprejudiced observers. Cosmopolitans, like Hume and Franklin, and shrewd reasoners, like the worthy Dean Tucker, could disperse many of the fallacies, though they could not quite shake off the inveterate prepossessions of the time. Political economy had become in their hands something more than a branch of statistics, though it was not yet more than a theory of commerce. No attempt had been made to solve some of the deeper problems of social organisation. Here and there the sound sense of men, like De Foe or Franklin, had called attention to such questions as the effect of poor-laws upon population. Their remarks, however, are rather specimens of good homely morality than of scientific reasoning. The advantages of frugality and independence, and the evil effects of paying people to be paupers, are fortunately perceptible without any deep scientific theory. The very notion of discussing, in a scientific spirit, such questions as the relation between labourers and capitalists, which are incomparably the most important topics with which economists can deal, had not yet dawned upon the economical speculators. Now it is impossible to frame a satisfactory theory of trade between nations without understanding the industrial organisation of the nations themselves. The disturbance produced in a nation by the opening or closing of a foreign trade can only be traced when we begin to appreciate the general conditions of the production of wealth. A discussion of the effects of protection naturally led, as we have seen, to an investigation of the perplexing question as to the real effect of different forms of expenditure. By what process and to what extent did Foreign Trade really enrich a nation? Was it an advantage to a people to get perishable materials in exchange for solid gold? Was it an advantage that many labourers should be employed in producing a commodity at home instead of a few in raising the materials which could be exchanged for the same amount abroad? Such questions inevitably suggested themselves; and most writers shrank from the difficult task of answering them satisfactorily. Hume glided over the subject with suspicious lightness, and able advocates of Free Trade, like Tucker, fell into gross errors in dealing with such knotty points. A school, however, was rising which endeavoured to supply an answer to such difficulties, and whose endeavours, though not supplying a satisfactory theory, for the first time led to the conception of political economy as a theory of social organisation instead of a mere generalisation of mercantile maxims. 21. The French school of economists struck out a doctrine remarkable for its ingenuity and simplicity, and for a logical symmetry which covered some radical confusion of ideas. It was expounded by a number of able writers, such as Quesnay, its inventor, the elder Mirabeau, and especially by Turgot, who tried to carry some of its teachings into practice. Turgot's treatise, Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth,' was called by Condorcet the germ of Smith's Wealth of Nations; and, though the justice of the name may be disputed, it is at least a compendious statement of principles by which Smith was materially influenced. The French economists illustrate the general tendency of their nation, and of the school of thought to which they belonged, to frame a coherent and over-rigid logical system. They aimed at the discovery of a few simple formulæ which should determine the industrial relations, as the dogmas about the rights of man determined the political relations, of mankind. The cumbrous system of restrictions by which statesmen of the Colbert school had sought to regulate industry were to be superseded by a few clear laws, framed on a rational basis, as the old political order was to give place to a symmetrical constitution based upon principles of abstract justice. In England, reformers found themselves in conflict with an apparatus of tariffs and navigation laws produced by commercial jealousy. In France, the new school had to attack a series of regulations by which the internal development of the country was hindered and trammelled. The French economists naturally inclined |