In France the science of Political Economy, at first, was only considered in its application to public finances. Sully remarks correctly enough, that agriculture and commerce are the two teats of the state; but from a vague and indistinct conception of the truth. The same observation may be applied to Vauban, a man of a sound practical mind, who, although in the army, was a philosopher and the friend of peace, and who being deeply afflicted with the misery into which his country had been plunged by the vain glory of Louis the Fourteenth, proposed a more equitable assessment of the taxes, as a means of alleviating the public burdens.

Under the influence of the Regent, opinions became unsettled; bank notes, supposed to be an inexhaustible source of wealth, were but the means of swallowing up capital, of expending what had never been earned, and of making a bankruptcy of all debts. Moderation and economy were turned into ridicule. The courtiers of the prince, either by persuasion or corruption, encouraged him in every species of extravagance. At this period, the maxim that a state is enriched by luxury was reduced to system. All the talents and learning of the day were exerted in gravely maintaining such a paradox in prose, or in embellishing it with the more attractive charms of poetry. The dissipation of the national treasures was really supposed to merit the public gratitude. This ignorance of first principles, with the debauchery and licentiousness of the duke of Orleans, conspired to effect the ruin of the kingdom. During the long peace maintained by cardinal Fleury, France recovered a little; the insignificant administration of this weak minister at least proving, that the ruler of a nation may achieve much good by abstaining from the commission of evil.

The steadily increasing progress of different branches of industry, the advancement of the sciences, whose influence upon wealth we shall have occasion hereafter to notice, and the direction of public opinion, at length estimating national prosperity as being of some importance, caused the science of Political Economy to enter into the contemplation of a great number of writers. Its true principles were not then known; but since, according to the observation of Fontenelle, our condition is such, that we are not permitted at once to arrive at the truth, but must previously pass through various species of errors and various grades of follies, ought these false steps to be considered as altogether useless, which have taught us to advance with more steadiness and certainty?

Montesquieu, who was desirous of considering laws in all their relations, inquired into their influence on national wealth. The nature and origin of wealth he should first have ascertained; of which, however, he did not form any opinion. We are, nevertheless, indebted to this distinguished author for the first

Queypo, an individual alike distinguished by his abilities and patriotism, whose remarks I have only copied.

philosophical examination of the principles of legislation; and, in this point of view, he, perhaps, may be considered as the master of the English writers, who now are so generally esteemed as being ours; just in the same manner as Voltaire has been the master of their best historians, who now furnish us with models worthy of imitation.

About the middle of the eighteenth century, certain principles in relation to the origin of wealth, advanced by Doctor Quesnay, made a great number of proselytes. The enthusiastic admiration these persons manifested for their founder, the scrupulous exactness with which they have uniformly since followed the same dogmas, and the energy and zeal they displayed in maintaining them, have caused them to be considered as a sect, which has received the name of Economists. Instead of first observing the nature of things, or the manner in which they take place, of classifying these observations and deducing from them general propositions, they commenced by laying down some abstract general positions, which they styled axioms, from supposing them to contain intuitive evidence of their own truth. They then endeavoured to accommodate the particular facts to them, and to infer from them their Jaws; thus involving themselves in the defence of maxims evidently at variance with common sense and universal experi ence, as will appear hereafter in various parts of this work. Their opponents had not themselves formed any more correct views of the subjects in controversy. With considerable learning and talents on both sides, they were either wrong or right by chance. Points were contested that should have been conceded, and opinions, unquestionably false, acquiesced in; in short, they combated in the clouds. Voltaire,who so well knew how to detect the ridiculous, wherever it was to be found, in his Homme aux quarante écus, satirized the system of the Economists; yet, in exposing the tiresome trash of Mercier de la Rivière and the absurdities contained in Mirabeau's L'ami des Hommes, was himself unable to point out the errors of either.

The economists, by promulgating some important truths, by directing a more general attention to objects of public utility, and by exciting discussions, which although at that time of no advantage, have since led to more accurate investigations, have unquestionably done much good. In representing agricultural industry as productive of wealth, they were not deceived; and, perhaps, the necessity they were in of unfolding the nature of production, has caused the further examination of this

• When they maintain, for example, that a fall in the price of food is a public calamity.

Among the discussions they provoked, we must not forget the entertain. ing Dialogues on the Corn Trade by the Abbé Galiani, in which the scr. ence of Political Economy is treated in the humorous manner of Tristram Shandy. An important truth is asserted, and when the author is called upon for its proof, he replies with some ingenious pleasantry.

important phenomenon, which has conducted their successors to its entire development. On the other hand, the labours of the Economists have been attended with serious evils; the many useful maxims they decryed, their sectarian spirit, the dogmatical and abstract language of the greater part of their writings, and the tone of inspiration pervading them, gave currency to the opinion, that all who were engaged in such studies were but idle dreamers, whose theories, at best only gratifying literary curiosity, were wholly inapplicable in practice.

No one, however, has ever denied that the writings of the Economists have uniformly been favourable to the strictest morality and to the liberty, which every human being ought to possess, of disposing of his person, fortune and talents, according to the bent of his inclination; without which, individual happiness and national prosperity are but empty and unmeaning sounds. These opinions alone entitle their authors to universal gratitude and esteem. I do not, moreover, believe that a dishonest man or bad citizen can be found among their number.

This is doubtless the reason why, since the year 1760, almost all the French writers of any celebrity on subjects connected with Political Economy, without absolutely being enrolled under the banners of the Economists, have, nevertheless, been influenced by their opinions. Raynal, Condorcet, besides many others, will be found among this number. Condillac may also be enumerated among them, notwithstanding his endeavours to found a system of his own in relation to a subject which he did not understand. Many useful hints may be collected from amidst the ingenious trifling of his work;t but, like the Economists, he almost invariably founds a principle upon some gratuitous assumption. Now, an hypothesis may indeed be resorted to, in order to exemplify and elucidate the correctness of the general reasoning, but never can be suf

The belief that moral and political science is founded upon chimerical theories, arises chiefly from our almost continually confounding questions of right with matters of fact. Of what consequence, for instance, is the question so long agitated in the writings of the Economists, whether the sovereign power in a country is, or is not, the co-proprietor of the soil? The fact is, that in every country the government takes, or in the shape of taxes the people are compelled to furnish it, with a part of the revenue drawn from real estate. Here then is a fact, and an important one; the consequence of certain facts, which we can trace up, as the cause of other facts (such as the rise in the price of commodities) to which we are led with certainty, Questions of right are always more or less matters of opinion; matters of fact. on the contrary, are susceptible of proof and demonstration. The former exercise but little influence over the fortunes of mankind; while the latter, inasmuch as facts grow out of each other, are deeply interesting to them; and, as it is of importance to us that some results should take place in preference to others, it is, therefore, essential to ascertain the means by which these may be obtained. The Social Contract of J. J. Rousseau, from being almost entirely founded upon questions of right, has thereby become, what I feel no hesitation in avowing, a work of at least but little practical utility.

Du Commerce et du Governement considérés l'ân relativement à l'autre.

ficient to establish a fundamental truth. Political Economy has only become a science, since it has been confined to the results of inductive investigation.

Turgot was himself too good a citizen, not sincerely to esteem as good citizens as the Economists; and, accordingly, when in power, he deemed it advantageous to countenance them. The Economists, in their turn, found their account in passing off so enlightened an individual and minister of state. as one of their adepts; but the opinions of Turgot, however, were not borrowed from their school, but derived from the nature of things; and although on many important points of doctrine he may have been deceived, the measures of his administration, either planned or executed, are amongst the most brilliant ever conceived by any statesman. There can not therefore be a stronger proof of the incapacity of his sovereign, than his inability to appreciate such exertions, or if capable of appreciating them, in not knowing how to afford them support.

The Economists not only exercised a particular sway over French writers; but also had a very remarkable influence over many Italian authors, who even went beyond them. Beccaria, in a course of public lectures at Milan, first analysed the true functions of productive capital. The Count de Verri, the countryman and friend of Beccaria, and worthy of being so, both a man of business and an accomplished scholar, in his Meditazione sull' Economia politica, published in 1771, approached nearer than any other writer before Dr. Smith, to the real laws which regulate the production and consumption of wealth. Filangieri, whose treatise on political and economical laws was not given to the public until the year 1780, appears not to have been acquainted with the work of Dr. Smith, published four years before. The principles de Verri laid down are followed by Filangieri, and even received from him a more complete development; but although guided by the torch of analysis and deduction, he did not proceed from the most fortunate premises to the immediate consequences which confirm them, at the same time that they exhibit their application and utility.

None of these inquiries could lead to any important result. How, indeed, was it possible to become acquainted with the causes of national prosperity, when no clear or distinct notions had been formed respecting the nature of wealth itself? The object of our investigations must be thoroughly perceived before the means of attaining it are sought after. In the year 1776, Adam Smith, educated in that school in Scotland which has produced so many scholars, historians and philosophers of the highest celebrity, published his Inquiry into the Nature

See the syllabus of his lectures, which was printed for the first time, in the year 1804, in the valuable collection published at Milan by Pietro Custodi, under the title of Scrittori classici italiani di Economia politica. It was unknown to me until after the publication of the first edition of this work in 1803.

and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. In this work, its author demonstrated that wealth was the exchangeable value of things; that its extent was proportional to the number of things in our possession having value; and, that inasmuch as value could be given or added to matter, that wealth could be created and engrafted on things previously destitute of value, and there be preserved, accumulated or destroyed.*

In inquiring into the origin of value, Dr. Smith found it to be derived fom the labour of man, which he ought to have denominated industry, from its being a more comprehensive and significant term than labour. From this fruitful demonstration he deduced numerous and important conclusions respecting the causes which, from checking the development of the productive powers of labour, are prejudicial to the growth of wealth; and as they are rigorous deductions from an indisputable prínciple, they have only been assailed by individuals, either too careless to have thoroughly understood the principle, or of such perverted understandings as to be wholly incapable of seizing the connexion or relation between any two ideas. Whenever the Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations is perused with the attention it so well merits, it will be perceived, that until the epoch of its publication the science of Political Economy did not exist.

From this period gold and silver coin were considered as constituting only a portion, and but a small portion, of National Wealth; a portion the less important, because less susceptible of increase, and because its uses can be more easily supplied than those of many other articles equally valuable; and hence it results that a community, as well as its individual members, are in no way interested in obtaining metallic money beyond the extent of this limited demand.

These views, we conceive, first enabled Dr. Smith to ascertain, in their whole extent, the true functions of money; and the applications of them, which he made to bank notes and paper money, are of the utmost importance in practice. They afford him the means of demonstrating, that productive capí tal does not consist of a sum of money, but in the value of the objects made use of in production. He arranged and analysed

During the same year that Dr. Smith's work appeared, and immediately before its publication, Browne Dignan, published in London, written in the French language, his Essai sur les principes de l'Economie publique, containing the following remarkable passage: "The class of reproducers includes all who, uniting their labour to that of the vegetative power of the soil, or modifying the productions of nature in the processes of their several arts, create in some sort a new value, of which the sum total forms what is called the annual reproduction."

This striking passage, in which reproduction is more clearly characterised than in any part of Dr. Smith's writings, did not lead its author to any important conclusions, but merely gave birth to a few scattered hints. A want of connexion in his views, and of precision in his terms, have rendered his Essay so vague and obscure, that no instruction whatever can be derived from it.