Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/399

Rh POLITICAL ECONOMY 383 The theory amounts simply to this, that buying is also selling, and that it is by producing that we are enabled to purchase the products of others. Several distinguished economists, especially Malthus and Sismondi, in conse quence chiefly of a misinterpretation of the phenomena of commercial crises, maintained that there might be general over-supply or excess of all commodities above the demand. This Say rightly denied. A particular branch of produc tion may, it must indeed be admitted, exceed the existing capabilities of the market ; but, if we remember that supply is demand, that commodities are purchasing power, we cannot accept the doctrine of the possibility of a uni versal glut without holding that we can have too much of everything that &quot; all men can be so fully provided with the precise articles they desire as to afford no market for each other s superfluities.&quot; But, whatever services he may have rendered by original ideas on those or other subjects, his great merit is certainly that of a propagandist and popularizer. The imperial police would not permit a second edition of his work to be issued without the introduction of changes which, with noble independence, he refused to make ; and that edition did not therefore appear till 1814. Three other editions were published during the life of the author in 1817, 1819, and 1826. In 1828 Say published a second treatise, Cours complet d Economie Politique Pratique, which contained the substance of his lectures at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers and at the College de France. Whilst in his earlier treatise he had kept within the narrow limits of strict economics, in his later work he enlarged the sphere of discussion, introducing in particular many considerations respecting the economic influence of social institutions. Soiondi. Jean Charles L. Simonde de Sismondi (1773-1842), author of the Histoire des RepuUiques Italiennes du moyen dye, represents in the economic field a protest, founded mainly on humanitarian sentiment, against the dominant doctrines. He wrote first a treatise De la Richesse Com- merciale (1803), in which he followed strictly the principles of Adam Smith. But he afterwards came to regard these principles as insufficient and requiring modification. He contributed an article on political economy to the Edin burgh Encyclopedia, in which his new views were partially indicated. They were fully developed in his principal economic work, Nouveaux Principes d Economie Politique, ou de la Richesse dans ses rapports avec la Population (1819; 2d ed., 1827). This work, as he tells us, was not received with favour by economists, a fact which he explains by the consideration that he had &quot; attacked an orthodoxy an enterprise dangerous in philosophy as in religion.&quot; According to his view, the science, as commonly understood, was too much of a mere chrematistic : it studied too exclusively the means of increasing wealth, and not sufficiently the use of this wealth for producing general happiness. The practical system founded on it tended, as he believed, not only to make the rich richer, but to make the poor poorer and more dependent ; and he desired to fix attention on the question of distribution as by far the most important, especially in the social circum stances of recent times. The personal union in. Sismondi of three nationalities, the Italian, the French, and the Swiss, and his comprehen sive historical studies, gave him a special largeness of view ; and he was filled with a noble sympathy for the suffering members of society. He stands nearer to social ism than any other French economist proper, but it is only in sentiment, not in opinion, that he approximates to it ; he does not recommend any socialistic scheme. On the contrary, he declares in a memorable passage that, whilst he sees where justice lies, he must confess himself unable to suggest the means of realizing it in practice ; the division of the fruits of industry between those who are united in their production appears to him vicious ; but it is, in his judgment, almost beyond human power to conceive any system of property absolutely different from that which is known to us by experience. He goes no further than protesting, in view of the great evils which he saw around him, against the doctrine of laissez faire, and invoking, somewhat vaguely, the intervention of Governments to &quot; regulate the progress of wealth &quot; and to protect the weaker members of the community. His frank confession of impotence, far wiser and more honour able than the suggestion of precipitate and dangerous remedies, or of a recurrence to outworn medieval institutions, has not affected the reputation of the work. A prejudice was indeed early created against it in consequence of its partial harmony of tone, though, as we have seen, not of policy, with socialism, which was then j beginning to show its strength, as well as by the rude way in which his descriptions of the modern industrial system, especially as it existed in England, disturbed the complacent optimism of some members of the so-called orthodox school. These treated the book with ill-disguised contempt, and Bastiat spoke of it as preaching an Sconomie politique it rebours. But it has held its place in the literature of the science, and is now even more inter esting than when it first appeared, because in our time there is a more general disposition, instead of denying or glossing over the serious evils of industrial society, to fac&quot;e and remove or at least mitigate them. The laissez faire doctrine, too, has been dis credited in theory and abandoned in practice ; and we are ready to admit Sismondi s view of the state as a power not merely intrusted with the maintenance of peace, but charged also with the mission of extending the benefits of the social union and of modern progress as widely as possible through all classes of the community. Yet the impression which his treatise leaves behind it is a dis couraging one ; and this because he regards as essentially evil many things which seem to be the necessary results of the development of industry. The growth of a wealthy capitalist class and of manufacture on the great scale, the rise of a vast body of workers who live by their labour alone, the extended application of machines, large landed properties cultivated with the aid of the most advanced appliances all these he dislikes and deprecates ; but they appear to be inevitable. The problem is, how to regulate and moralize the system they imply ; but we must surely accept it in principle, unless we aim at a thorough social revolution. Sismondi may be regarded as the precursor of the German economists known under the inexact designation of &quot;Socialists of the Chair &quot; ; but their writings are much more hopeful and inspiring. To the subject of population he devotes special care, as of great importance for the welfare of the working classes. So far as agriculturists are concerned, he thinks the system of what he calls patriarchal exploitation, where the cultivator is also proprietor, and is aided by his family in tilling the land a law of equal division among the natural heii s being apparently presupposed the one which is most efficacious in preventing an undue increase of the population. The father is, in such a case, able distinctly to estimate the resources available for his children, and to determine the stage of subdivision which would necessitate the descent of the family from the material and social position it had previously occupied. When children beyond this limit are born, they do not marry, or they choose amongst their number one to continue the race. This is the view which, adopted by J. S. Mill, makes so great a figure in the too favourable presentation by that writer of the system of peasant proprietors. In no French economic writer is greater force or general Dunoyer. solidity of thought to be found than in Charles Dunoyer (1786-1862), author of La Lilerte du Travail (1845; the substance of the first volume had appeared under a differ ent title in 1825), honourably known for his integrity and independence under the regime of the Restoration. What makes him of special importance in the history of the science is his view of its philosophical constitution and method. With respect to method, he strikes the keynote at the very outset in the words &quot;rechercher expe ri- mentalement,&quot; and in professing to build on &quot; les donnees de 1 observation et de 1 experience.&quot; He shows a marked tendency to widen economics into a general science of society, expressly describing political economy as having for its province the whole order of things which results from the exercise and development of the social forces.