Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/412

Rh POLITICAL ECONOMY Say,&quot; besides a Traite theoriquc ct pratique dcs operations dc Banquc anil Theorie dcs Enterprises Indiistriellcs (1856), wrote a Traite dc rconomic Politiquc (1S58-5P), which is held in much esteem. Finally, the Genevese, Antoine Elise Clierbuliez (d. 1869) was author of what Cossa pronounces to be the best treatise on the science in the French language (Precis de la Science jZconomiquc, 1862). L. Walras, in ^Umentsd Economic Politique pure (lB74t 77), and Theoric Mathematique dc la JZichesse Sociale (1883), has followed the ex ample of Cournot in attempting a mathematical treatment of the subject. England. Sacrificing the strict chronological order of the history of economics to deeper considerations, we have already spoken of Cairnes, describing him as the last original English writer who was an adherent of the old school pure and simple. Both in method and doctrine he was essentially Ricardian ; though professing and really feeling profound respect for Mill, he was disposed to go behind him and attach himself rather to their common master. Mr Sidgwick is doubtless right in believing that his Leading Principles did much to shake &quot; the unique prestige which Mill s exposition had enjoyed for nearly half a generation,&quot; and in this, as in some other ways, Cairnes may have been a dissolving force, and tended towards radical change ; but, if he exercised this influence, he did so unconsciously and involuntarily. Many influ ences had, however, for some time been silently sapping the foundations of the old system. The students of Comte had seen that its method was an erroneous one. The elevated moral teaching of Carlyle had disgusted the best minds with the low maxims of the Manchester school. Ruskin had not merely protested against the egoistic spirit of the prevalent doctrine, but had pointed to some of its real weaknesses as a scientific theory. 1 It began to be felt, and even its warmest partisans sometimes admitted, that it had done all the work, mainly a destructive one, of which it was capable. Cairnes himself declared that, whilst most educated people believed it doomed to sterility for the future, some energetic minds thought it likely to be a positive obstruction in the way of useful reform. Miss Martineau, who had in earlier life been a thorough Ricardian, came to think that political economy, as it had been elaborated by her contemporaries, was, strictly speak ing, no science at all, and must undergo such essential change that future generations would owe little to it beyond the establishment of the existence of general laws in one department of human affairs. The instinctive repugnance of the working classes had continued, in spite of the efforts of their superiors to recommend its lessons to them efforts which were perhaps not unfrequently dictated rather by class interest than by public spirit. All the symptoms boded impending change, but they were visible rather in general literature and in the atmo sphere of social opinion than within the economic circle. But when it became known that a great movement had taken place, especially in Germany, on new and more hopeful lines, the English economists themselves began to recognize the necessity of a reform and even to further its advent. The principal agencies of this kind, in marshal ling the way to a renovation of the science, have been those of Bagehot, Leslie, and Jevons, the first limiting the sphere of the dominant system, while seeking to con serve it within narrower bounds ; the second directly assailing it and setting up the new method as the rival and destined successor of the old ; and the third acknow ledging the collapse of the hitherto reigning dynasty, proclaiming the necessity of an altered regime, and admit ting the younger claimant as joint possessor in the future. Thus, in England too, the dualism which exists on the Continent has been established ; and there is reason to 1 The remarkable book Money and Morals, by John Lalor, 1852, was written partly under the influence of Carlyle. There is a good monograph entitled John Jiuskin, Economist, by P. Geddes, 1884. expect that here more speedily and decisively than in France or Italy the historical school will displace its antagonist. It is certainly in England next after Germany that the preaching of the new views has been most vigorously and effectively begun. Walter Bagehot (1826-1877) was author of an excellent Bagehol work on the English money market and the circumstances which have determined its peculiar character (Lombard Street, 1873; 7th ed., 1878), and of several monographs on particular monetary questions, which his practical ex perience, combined with his scientific habits of thought, eminently fitted him to handle. On the general prin ciples of economics he wrote some highly important essays collected in Economic Studies (edited by R. H. Hutton, 1880), the object of which was to show that the tradi tional system of political economy the system of Ricardo and J. S. Mill rested on certain fundamental assump tions, which, instead of being universally true in fact, were only realized within very narrow limits of time and space. Instead of being applicable to all states of society, it holds only in relation to those &quot; in which com merce has largely developed, and where it has taken the form of development, or something like the form, which it has taken in England.&quot; It is &quot; the science of business such as business is in large and trading communities an analysis of the great commerce by which England has become rich.&quot; But more than this it is not; it will not explain the economic life of earlier times, nor even of other communities in our own time ; and for the latter reason it has remained insular ; it has never been fully accepted in other countries as it has been at home. It is, in fact, a sort of ready reckoner, enabling us to calculate roughly what will happen under given conditions in Lombard Street, on the Stock Exchange, and in the great markets of the world. It is a &quot; convenient series of deductions from assumed axioms which are never quite true, which in many times and countries would be utterly untrue, but which are sufficiently near to the principal conditions of the modern &quot; English &quot; world to make it use ful to consider them by themselves.&quot; Mill and Cairnes had already shown that the science they taught was a hypothetic one, in the sense that it dealt not with real but with imaginary men &quot; economic men &quot; who were conceived as simply &quot; money-making animals.&quot; But Bagehot went further : he showed what those writers, though they may have indicated, had not clearly brought out, 2 that the world in which these men were supposed to act is also &quot; a very limited and peculiar world.&quot; What marks off this special world, he tells us, is the promptness of transfer of capital and labour from one employment to another, as determined by differences in the remuneration of those several employments a prompt ness, about the actual existence of which in the contempor ary English world he fluctuates a good deal, but which on the whole he recognizes as substantially realized. Bagehot described himself as &quot; the last man of the ante- Mill period,&quot; having learned his economics from Ricardo; and the latter writer he appears to have to the end greatly over-estimated. But he lived long enough to gain some knowledge of the historical method, and with it he had &quot;no quarrel, but rather much sympathy.&quot; &quot;Rightly conceived,&quot; he said, &quot; it is no rival to the abstract method rightly conceived.&quot; We will not stop to criticize a second time the term &quot; abstract method &quot; here applied to that of the old school, or to insist on the truth that all science is necessarily abstract, the only question that can arise being as to the just degree of abstraction, or, in general, as to the right constitution of the relation between the abstract and - Jones, whose writings were apparently unknown to Bagehot, had, as we have seen, in some degree anticipated him in this exposition.