Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/367

Rh POLITICAL ECONOMY 351 stayed, the old Roman virtues fostered, and the foundations of the commonwealth strengthened. Their attitude is thus similar to that of the French physiocrats invoking the improvement and zealous pursuit of agriculture alike against the material evils and the social degeneracy of their time. The question of the comparative merits of the large and small systems of cultivation appears to have been much discussed in the old Roman, as in the modern European world ; Columella is a decided advocate of the petite culture. The jurists were led by the coincidence which sometimes takes place between their point of view and that of economic science to make certain classifications and establish some more or less refined dis tinctions which the modern economists have either adopted from them or used independently. They appear also (though this has been disputed, Neri and Carli maintaining the affirmative, Pagnini the negative) to have had correct notions of the nature of money as having necessarily a value of its own, determined by economic conditions, and therefore incapable of being impressed upon it by convention or arbitrarily altered by public authority. But in general we find in these writers, as might be expected, not so much the results of independent thought as documents illustrating the facts of Roman economic life, and the historical policy of the nation with respect to economic subjects. From the latter point of view they are of much interest ; and by the information they supply as to the course of legislation relating to property generally, to sump tuary control, to the restrictions imposed on spendthrifts, to slavery, to the encouragement of population, and the like, they give us much clearer insight than we should otherwise possess into inlluences long potent in the history of Rome and of the Western world at large. But, as it is with the more limited field of system atic thought on political economy that we are here occupied, we can not enter into these subjects. One matter, however, ought to be adverted to, because it was not only repeatedly dealt with by legisla tion, but is treated more or less fully by all Roman writers of note, namely, the interest on money loans. The rate was fixed by the laws of the Twelve Tables ; but lending on interest was afterwards (B.C. 341) entirely prohibited by the Genucian Law. In the legis lation of Justinian, rates were sanctioned varying from four to eight per cent, according to the nature of the case, the latter being fixed as the ordinary mercantile rate, whilst compound interest was forbidden. The Roman theorists almost without exception dis approve of lending on interest altogether. Cato, as Cicero tells us, thought it as bad as murder (&quot;Quid fenerari? Quid hominem occidere ?&quot; Do Off. ii. 15); and Cicero, Seneca, Pliny, Columella all join in condemning it. It is not difficult to see how in early states of society the trade of money-lending becomes, and not unjustly, the object of popular odium ; but that these writers, at a period when commercial enterprise had made such considerable progress, should continue to reprobate it argues very imperfect or confused ideas on the nature and functions of capital. It is probable that practice took little heed either of these speculative ideas or of legislation on the subject, which experience shows can always be easily evaded. The traffic in money seems to have gone on all through Roman history, and the rate to have fluctuated according to the condition of the market. Looking back on the history of ancient economic specu lation, we see that, as might be anticipated a priori, the results attained in that field by the Greek and Roman writers were very scanty. As Duhring has well remarked, the questions with which the science has to do were regarded by the ancient thinkers rather from their political than their properly economic side. This we have already pointed out with respect to their treatment of the subject of population, and the same may be seen in the case of the doctrine of the division of labour, with which Plato and Aristotle are in some degree occupied. They regard that principle as a basis of social classification, or use it in showing that society is founded on a spontaneous co-opera tion of diverse activities. From the strictly economic point of view, there are three important propositions which can be enunciated respecting that division : (1) that its extension within any branch of production makes the products cheaper ; (2) that it is limited by the extent of the market ; and (3) that it can be carried farther in manufactures than in agriculture. But we shall look in vain for these propositions in the ancient writers ; the first alone might be inferred from their discussions of the subject. It has been the tendency especially of German scholars to magnify unduly the extent and value of the contributions of antiquity to economic knowledge. The Greek and Roman authors ought certainly not to be omitted in any account of the evolution of this branch of study. But it must be kept steadily in view that we find in them only first hints or rudiments of general economic truths, and that the science is essentially a modern one. We shall indeed see hereafter that it could not have attained its definitive constitution before our own time. MIDDLE AGES. The Middle Ages (400-1300 A.D.) form a period of great significance in the economic, as in the general, his tory of Europe. They represent a vast transition, in which the germs of a new world were deposited, but in which little was fully elaborated. There is scarcely any thing in the later movement of European society which we do not find there, though as yet, for the most part, crude and undeveloped. The mediaeval period was the object of contemptuous depreciation on the part of the liberal schools of the last century, principally because it contributed so little to literature. But there are things more important to mankind than literature; and the great men of the Middle Ages had enough to do in other fields to occupy their utmost energies. The development of the Catholic institutions and the gradual establishment and maintenance of a settled order after the dissolution of the Western empire absorbed the powers of the thinkers and practical men of several centuries. The first mediaeval phase, from the commencement of the 5th century to the end of the 7th, was occupied with the painful and stormy struggle towards the foundation of the new ecclesiastical and civil system ; three more centuries were filled with the work of its consolidation and defence against the assaults of nomad populations ; only in the final phase, during the llth, 12th, and 13th centuries, when the unity of the West was founded by the collective action against impending Moslem invasion, did it enjoy a sufficiently secure and stable existence to exhibit its essential character, and produce its noblest personal types. The elaboration of feudalism was, indeed, in progress during the whole period, showing itself in the decomposition of power and the hierarchical subordination of its several grades, the movement being only temporarily suspended during the second phase by the necessary defensive concentration under Charlemagne. But not before the first century of the last phase was the feudal system fully constituted. In like manner, only in the final phase could the effort of Catholicism after a universal discipline be carried out on the great scale an effort for ever admirable, though necessarily on the whole unsuccessful. No large or varied economic activity was possible under the ascendency of feudalism. That organization, as has been abundantly shown by philosophical historians, was indispensable for the preservation of order and for public defence, and contributed important elements to general civilization. But, whilst recognizing it as opportune and relatively beneficent, we must not expect from it advan tages inconsistent with its essential nature and historical office. The class which predominated in it was not sympathetic with industry, and held the handicrafts in contempt, except those subservient to war or rural sports. The whole practical life of the society was founded on territorial property; the wealth of the lord consisted in the produce of his lands and the dues paid to him in kind ; this wealth was spent in supporting a body of retainers whose services were repaid by their maintenance There could be little room for manufactures, and less for commerce ; and agriculture was carried on with a view to the wants of the family, or at most of the immediate neighbourhood, not to those of a wider market. The economy of the period was therefore simple, and, in the absence of special motors from without, unprogressive.