HAMILTON, Alexander (1757-1804), 'The Federalist' (with Jay and Madi- HOADLY, Benjamin (1676-1761), 'Origin of Civil Government,' 1710. HUME, David (1711-1776), ' Political Discourses,' 1752. Philosophical JOHNSON, Samuel (1709-1784), 'False Alarm,' 1770. 'Taxation No LAW, William (1686-1761), Tracts against Hoadly,' 1717. Works. LOCKE, John (1632-1704), 'Letters on Toleration,' 1689-92. Treatises on Government,' 1690. Works. London: 1824. MACKINTOSH, James (1765–1832), 'Vindiciæ Gallicæ,' 1791. 'Two PAINE, Thomas (1736-1809), 'Common Sense,' 1776. 'Rights of Man,' 1791-2. Political Works. London: 1821. PRICE, Richard (1723-1791), 'Observations on Civil Liberty,' 1776. 'Additional Observations,' 1777. 6 PRIESTLEY, Joseph (1733-1804), Essay on Principles of Government,' SHERLOCK, Thomas (1678–1761), Tracts in Answer to Hoadly,' 1718, &c. TINDAL, Matthew (1657-1733), ' Rights of the Christian Church,' 1706. 6 I. THE year 1776 is marked in political history by the Declaration of Independence; in the history of thought by the appearance of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations.' It was not an accidental coincidence that the same year should witness the great catastrophe brought about by the English Colonial policy, and the fullest confutation of the principles upon which that policy rested. Men generally discover that they ought to have foreseen an evil just as foresight is superseded by actual experience; and the history of political economy is but a series of proofs that the relation of speculation to practice is more frequently one of effect than of cause. We learn to think in proportion as the want of thought has made us suffer. Smith's teaching was emphasised at every line by the comment of contemporary history. The literary skill of the writer, the comprehensiveness of his knowledge, and the acuteness of his reasoning, stamped the book from its publication as one of those which is destined to mould the thoughts of a generation. To a statesman like the younger Pitt, filled with a lofty ambition, the Wealth of Nations' might well seem to be a revelation. For the first time an incoherent mass of empirical maxims was codified into a definite system, and elevated to the dignity of science. The mysteries of trade were cleared up, and a distinct map laid down of those bewildering labyrinths in which professional experts had too often lost both themselves and the statesmen who trusted to their guidance. Had Adam Smith announced no absolutely new doctrines, the comprehensiveness and clearness of his speculations would have given an entirely new rank to his study in the circle of human know ledge. The English economists, before the appearance of the 'Wealth of Nations,' claimed only to be adepts in the mysteries of commercial accounts. After it, they began to regard themselves as investigators of a new science, capable of determining the conditions and the limits of human progress. Some thinkers will infer that Smith was the first expounder of a new gospel; and others that he was the earliest mouthpiece of the degrading and materialising spirit of modern Mammonworship. But the previous question must be asked as to the potency of the influence, whether for good or for evil. Eulogists of the great economist have sometimes spoken as though the science, previously unborn, sprang in full maturity from his parental brain. To appreciate more accurately the real value of his work, we must enquire what had been done already, what still remained to be done, in his favourite science; and, further, what was its relation to the contemporary movements of thought in other departments of enquiry. 2. The claim of political economy to a place amongst the true sciences is still disputed. The language of some thinkers would assign to it a position analogous to that occupied in physiology by a study of the nutritive organs. According to them, it forms part of a complete sociology, requiring, indeed, the complement of other investigations of a different order, but accurate and definitive so far as it goes. By other thinkers, it is denied that such a process of separate enquiry is legitimate. The laws by which the social organism obtains, assimilates, and distributes its nourishment cannot, they think, be studied apart from other laws of growth with which they are inextricably involved. Upon either hypothesis," political economy is important regarded as a preparation of deeper investigations. A nation, it may be said, like an animal, is a highly complex piece of mechanism, though it is also something much more than a mere machine. Its wheels and levers are formed of living tissues, whose growth depends upon processes far too refined and intricate for the rough analysis of the economists. And yet the laws which regulate the mechanical relations of the organism nay be worth studying as well as those underlying laws whose existence we must take for granted. We learn something from an accurate description of the skeleton, though we do not understand the physiological law in virtue of which bones are formed, or the processes by which the actual framework has been developed. The economist does not tell us what are the ultimate instincts which hold society together; nor does he say by what historical process society has acquired its actual constitution; but, assuming that constitution to be such as we know it to be, he can disperse many fallacies, can explain the true nature of many phenomena, and he can at least prepare the way for the sociologist of the future. He does not, it may be, pierce to the ultimate laws of nature; for to each of his propositions must be added the tacit qualification, So long as society is what it is to-day;' but doctrines which hold good under that restriction are likely to be serviceable for a long time to come, and are at least better than doctrines which were never true at all. Many pestilent fallacies rested on a genuine intellectual confusion, and were sufficiently dispersed by an accurate description of the social machinery. The older theorists often held doctrines which were virtually not much wiser than the plan for raising the level of a canal by pumping water from one end and discharging it into the other. Such errors vanish so soon as the anatomy of the body politic is properly dissected and described. The knowledge thus obtained helps on a recognition of the truth, implied even in the cruder forms of political economy, that there is a certain fixed order in social phenomena, beyond the power of arbitrary modification by the legislator, and admitting of, or rather imperatively demanding, a study carried out in a scientific spirit. Hitherto, it may be roughly said that the advantages gained have consisted rather in clearing away old errors than in discovering new truths--so far as those processes can be separated-and in familiarising men's minds with the belief that human nature and human society do not lie in the domain of the purely arbitrary. 3. That part of the social order which is determined by the need of satisfying our material wants was naturally the first to which a scientific method could be applied. The various processes through which wealth is procured and distributed were obviously not capable of indefinite modification. The religious, or political, or artistic energies of the race may seem to be regulated by supernatural interference or by the arbitrary volitions of human beings. But in their efforts to wrest subsistence from the earth, men are rigidly bound by palpable material laws, which impose a corresponding uniformity of structure upon the social organism. In a primitive state of society, the structure is too simple to suggest any need of investigation. Each individual, or, at least, each family or community, is an independent unit. And when society has become differentiated into various classes, the distinction may be regarded as of divine and inscrutable or of human and arbitrary nature; and the relations between different classes or castes be, therefore, regarded as determinable by the priest or the legislator, not as developed by the operation of natural laws. But in modern European societies the rapid evolution of the different classes, each discharging a certain function, and spontaneously incorporating itself into the social order, the possibility of discovering some principle in virtue of which their position and their mutual relations were determined, independently of positive legislation, had long been recognised. Though, as yet, there had been no conscious attempt to found a science of sociology, isolated theories had grown up which might ultimately be incorporated in such a science, or supplanted by its fuller truths. Two more or less complete systems had obtained a certain notoriety at the time of Adam Smith, and were discussed in the Wealth of Nations.' The first of these theories was determined chiefly by the growth of commercial interests. The curious phenomenon produced by exchange and the use of money had suggested a set of crude opinions, rather than definite doctrines, which Adam Smith describes collectively as the mercantile system.' A more coherent and philosophical body of doctrines, erring by an excess rather than a defect of systematic spirit, had been worked out by the French economists, to whom Smith undoubtedly owed a great intellectual debt. It is called by him the agricultural theory, as the embodiment of speculations suggested chiefly by the conditions of French agriculture. 4. A brief examination of the chief characteristics of these two systems will explain the precise service rendered by Adam Smith. One general remark must be premised. The errors |