Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/404

Rh Herniaan. 2d ed., 1870) of Hermann do not form a regular system, lint treat a scries of important special subjects. His rare technological know- lodge gave him a great advantage in dealing with some economic questions. He reviewed the principal fundamental ideas of the science with great thoroughness and acuteness. &quot;His strength,&quot; says Roscher, &quot;lies in his clear, sharp, exhaustive distinction be tween the several elements of a complex conception, or the several steps comprehended in a complex act.&quot; For keen analytical power liis German brethren compare him with Ricardo. But he avoids several one-sided views of the English economist. Thus he places public spirit beside egoism as an economic motor, regards price as not measured by labour only but as a product of several factors, and habitually contemplates the consumption of the labourer, not as a part of the cost of production to the capitalist, but as the main Vou practical end of economics. Von Thiinen is known principally by Thiuien. n S remarkable work entitled Der Isolirtc Staat in Bczichung auf iMndwirthschaft itnd NationalUkonomie (1826; 2d ed., 1842). In this treatise, which is a classic in the political economy of agricul ture, there is a rare union of exact observation with creative imagination. With a view to exhibit the natural development of agriculture, he imagines a state, isolated from the rest of the world, circular in form and of uniform fertility, without navigable rivers or canals, with a single large city at its centre, which supplies it with manufactures and receives in exchange for them its food- products, and proceeds to study the effect of distance from this central market OH the agricultural economy of the several concentric spaces which compose the territory. The method, it will be seen, is highly abstract, but, though it may not be fruitful, it is quite legitimate. The author is under no illusion blinding him to the unreality of the hypothetic case. The supposition is necessary, in his view, in order to separate and consider apart one essential condition that, namely, of situation with respect to the market. It was his intention (imperfectly realized, however) to institute afterwards several different hypotheses in relation to his isolated state, for the purpose of similarly studying other conditions which in real life are found in combination or conflict. The objection to this method lies in the difficulty of the return from the abstract study to the actual facts ; and this is probably an insuperable one in regard to most of its applications. The investigation, however, leads to trustworthy conclusions as to the conditions of the succes sion of different systems of land economy. The book abounds in calculations relating to agricultural expenditure and income, which diminish its interest to the general reader, though they are con sidered valuable to the specialist. They embody the results of the practical experience of the author on his estate of Tellow in Mecklenburg-Sehwerin. Von Thiinen was strongly impressed with the danger of a violent conflict between the middle class and the proletariate, and studied earnestly the question of wages, which he was one of the first to regard, not merely as the price of the commodity labour, but as the means of subsistence of the mass of the community. He arrived by mathematical reasonings of some complexity at a_formula which expresses the amount of &quot; natural wages&quot; as= Jap, where a is the necessary expenditure of the labourer for subsistence, and p is the product of his labour. To this formula he attributed so much importance that he directed it to be engraved on his tomb. It implies that wages ought to rise with the amount of the product ; and this conclusion led him to establish on his estate a system of participation by the labourers in the profits of farming, of which some account will be found in Air Sedley Taylor s Profit-sharing between Capital and Labour (1884). Von Thiinen deserves more attention than he has received in England ; both as a man and as a writer he was eminently interesting and original ; and there is much in Der Isolirtc Stoat and his other works that is awakening and suggestive. Roscher recognizes what he calls a Germane -Russian (deutsch-russische) school of political economy, represented principally by Heinrich Storch (1766-1825). Mercantilist principles had been preached by a native (&quot; autochthonen &quot;) economist, Ivan Possoschkoff, in the time of Peter the Great. The new ideas of the Smithian system were intro duced into Russia by Christian von Schlozer (1774-1831) in his professorial lectures and in his Anfanr/sgriinde der StaatnrirtJuchaft, oder die Lehre von National-reichthume Storch. (1805-1807). Storch was instructor in economic science of the future emperor Nicholas and his brother the grand- duke Michael, and the substance of his lessons to them is contained in his Cours d?conomie Politir/ue (1815). The translation of this treatise into Russian was prevented by the censorship; Rau published a German version of it, with annotations, in 1819. It is a work of a very high order of merit. The epithet &quot; deutsch-russisch &quot; seems little applicable to Storch; as Roscher himself says, he follows mainly English and French writers Say, Sismondi, Turgot, Bentham, Steuart, and Hume, but, above all, Adam Smith. His personal position (and the same is true of Schlozer) led him to consider economic doctrines in con nexion with a stage of culture different from that of the Western populations amongst which they had been formu lated ; this change of the point of view opened the door to relativity, and helped to prepare the historical method. Storch s study of the economic and moral effects of serfdom is regarded as especially valuable. The general subjects with which he has particularly connected his name are (1) the doctrine of immaterial commodities (or elements of national prosperity), such as health, talent, morality, and the like ; (2) the question of &quot; productive &quot; and &quot; unpro ductive,&quot; as characters of labour and of consumption, on which he disagreed with Smith and may have furnished indications to Dunoyer ; and (3) the differences between the revenue of nations and that of individuals, on which ho follows Lauderdale and is opposed to Say. The latter economist having published at Paris (1823) a new edition of Storch s Cours, with criticisms sometimes offensive in tone, he published by way of reply to some of Say s strictures what is considered his ripest and scientifically most important work, Considerations sur la nature du Revenu National (1824; translated into German by the author himself, 1825). A distinct note of opposition to the Smithian economics was sounded in Germany by two writers, who, setting out from somewhat different points of view, animated by different sentiments, and favouring different practical sys tems, yet, so far as their criticisms are concerned, arrive at similar conclusions ; we mean Adam Miiller and Friedrich List. Adam Miiller (1779-1829) was undoubtedly a man of Mill real genius. In his principal work Element? der Staatskimst (1809), and his other writings, he represents a movement of economic thought which was in relation with the (so-called) Romantic literature of the period. The reaction against Smithianism of which he was the coryphaeus was founded on an attachment to the principles and social system of the Middle Ages. It is possible that the political and historical ideas which inspire him, his repugnance to contemporary liberalism, and his notions of regular organic development, especially in relation to England, were in some degree imbibed from Edmund Burke, whose Reflections on the Revolution in France had been translated into German by Friedrich Gentz, the friend and teacher of Miiller. The association of his criticisms with mediaeval prepossessions ought not to prevent our recognizing the elements of truth which they contain. He protests against the doctrine of Smith and against modern political economy in general on the ground that it presents a mechanical, atomistic, and purely material conception of society, that it reduces to nullity all moral forces and ignores the necessity of a moral order, that it is at bottom no more than a theory of private property and private interests, and takes no account of the life of the people as a whole in its national solidarity and historical continuity. Exclusive attention, he complains, is devoted to the immediate production of objects possessing exchange value and to the transitory existence of individuals ; whilst to the maintenance of the collective production for future generations, to intellectual pro ducts, powers, possessions, and enjoyments, and to the state with its higher tasks and aims, scarcely a thought is given. The truth is that nations are specialized organisms with distinct principles of life, having definite individualities which determine the course of their historical development. Each is through all time one whole; and, as the present is the heir of the past, it ought to keep before it constantly the permanent good of the community in the future. The economic existence of a people is only one side or province of its entire activity, requiring to be kept in harmony with the higher ends of society ; and the proper organ to effect this reconciliation is the state, which, instead of being merely an apparatus for the administration of justice, represents the totality of the national life. The division of labour, Miiller holds, is imperfectly developed