Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/417

Rh P L P L 401 to meddle. But the dangers and inconveniences which arise from the unsettled condition of the world of labour will doubtless from time to time here, as elsewhere, prompt to premature attempts at regulation. Apart, however, from the removal of evils which threaten the public peace, and from temporary palliations to ease off social pressure, the right policy of the state in this sphere will for the present be one of abstention. It is indeed certain that industrial society will not permanently remain without a systematic organization. The mere conflict of private interests will never produce a well-ordered commonwealth of labour. Freiheit ist Jceine Losung. Freedom is for society, as for the individual, the necessary condition precedent of the solution of practical problems, both as allowing natural forces to develop themselves and as exhibiting their spontaneous tendencies ; but it is not in itself the solution. Whilst, however, an organization of the industrial world may with certainty be expected to arise in process of time, it would be a great error to attempt to improvise one. We are now in a period of transition. Our ruling powers have still an equivocal character ; they are not in real harmony with industrial life, and are in all respects imperfectly imbued with the modern spirit. Besides, the conditions of the new order are not yet sufficiently under stood. The institutions of the future must be founded on sentiments and habits, and these must be the slow growth of thought and experience. The solution, indeed, must be at all times largely a moral one ; it is the spiritual rather than the temporal power that is the natural agency for redressing or mitigating most of the evils associated with industrial life. 1 In fact, if there is a tendency and we may admit that such a tendency is real or imminent to push the state towards an extension of the normal limits of its action for the maintenance of social equity, this is doubtless in some measure due to the fact that the growing dissidence on religious questions in the most advanced communities has weakened the authority of the churches, and deprived their influence of social universality. What is now most urgent is not legislative interference on any large scale with the industrial relations, but the formation, in both the higher and lower regions of the industrial world, of profound convictions as to social duties, and some more effective mode than at present exists of diffusing, maintaining, and applying those convictions. This is a subject into which we cannot enter here. But it may at least be said that the only parties in contemporary public life which seem rightly to conceive or adequately to appreciate the necessities of the situation are those that aim, on the one hand, at the restoration of the old spiritual power, or, on the other, at the formation of a new one. And this leads to the con clusion that there is one sort of Governmental interference which the advocates of laissez faire have not always dis countenanced, and which yet, more than any other, tends to prevent the gradual and peaceful development of a new industrial and social system, namely, the interference with spiritual liberty by setting up official types of philosophical doctrine, and imposing restrictions on the expression and discussion of opinions. It will be seen that our principal conclusion respecting economic action harmonizes with that relating to the theoretic study of economic phenomena. For, as we held that the latter could not be successfully pursued except as a duly subordinated branch of the wider science of sociology, so in practical human affairs we believe that no partial synthesis is possible, but that an economic re organization of society implies a universal renovation, intellectual and moral no less than material. The indus trial reformation for which western Europe groans and travails, and the advent of which is indicated by so many symptoms (though it will come only as the fruit of faith ful and sustained effort), will be no isolated fact, but will form one part of an applied art of life, modifying our whole environment, affecting our whole culture, and re gulating our whole conduct in a word, consciously directing all our resources to the conservation and evolu tion of humanity. The reader is referred for fuller information to the following works on the history of political economy, all of which have been more or less, and some very largely, used in the preparation of the foregoing outline. GENERAL HISTORIES. Histoire de I Economic Politigue en Europe depuis les anciens jusqu? a nos jours, by Jerome Adolphe Blanqui (1837-38); of which there is an English translation by Emily J. Leonard (1880). Histoire de TEconomie Politique, by Alban de Villeneuve-Bargemont (Brussels, 1839 ; Paris, 1841) ; written from the Catholic point of view. View of the Progress of Political Economy in Europe since the Wi Century, by Travers Twiss, D. C.L. (1847). Die geschichtliche Entwickelung der National- Oc,konomik und ihrer Literatur, by Julius Kautz (2d ed. 1860) ; a valuable work marked by philosophical breadth, and exhibiting the results of extensive research, but too declamatory in style. Kritische Geschichte der Nationalokonomie und der Socialismus, by Emile Diihring (1871 ; 3d ed. 1879) ; characterized by its author s usual sagacity, but also by his usual perverseness and depreciation of meritorious writers in his own field. Guida allo studio dell Economia Politica, by Luigi Cossa (1876 and 1878 ; Eng. trans. 1880). Geschichte der Nationalokonomik, by H. Eisenhart (1881) ; a vigorous and original sketch. And, lastly, a brief but excellent history by H. von Scheel in the Handbuch der politischen Oekonomie (really a great encyclopaedia of economic knowledge in all its extent and applications), edited by Gustav Schonberg (1882). To these histories proper must be added The Literature of Political Economy, by J. B. M Culloch (1845), a book which might with advantage be re-edited, supplemented where imperfect, and con tinued to our own time. Some of the biographical and critical notices by Eugene Daire and others in the Collection des principaux Economistes will also be found useful, as well as the articles in the Dictionnaire de I Economie Politique of Coquelin and Guillaumin (1852-53), which is justly described by Jevons as &quot;on the whole the best work of reference in the literature of the science. &quot; SPECIAL HISTORIES. Italy. Storia della Economia Pubblica in Italia, ossia Epilogo critico dcgli Economists Italiani, by Count Giuseppe Pecchio (1829), intended as an appendix to Baron Custodi s collection of the Scrittori classici Italiani di Economia Politica, 50 vols., comprising the writings of Italian economists from 1582 to 1804. There is a French translation of Pecchio s work by Leonard Gallois (1830). The book is not without value, though often superficial and rhetorical. Spain. Storia della Economia Politica in Espana (1863), by M. Colmeiro ; rather a history of economy than of economics of policies and institutions rather than of theories and literary works. Germany. Geschichte der National-okonomik in Dcutschland (1874), by AVilhelm Boscher ; a vast repertory of learning on its subject, with occasional side-glances at other economic literatures. Die neuere National-okonomie in ihrcn Hauptrichtungen, by Moritz Meyer (3d ed., 1882) ; a useful handbook dealing almost exclusively with recent German speculation and policy. England. Zur Geschichte der Enylischen Volksivirthschaftslchre, by W. Boscher (1851-52). The reader is also advised to consult the articles of the present work which relate directly to the several principal writers on political economy. (J. K. I.) POLK, JAMES KNOX (1795-1849), eleventh president of the United States of America, was of Scoto-Irish 1 The neglect of this consideration, and the consequent undue exaltation of state action, which, though quite legitimate, is altogether insufficient, appears to us the principal danger to which the con temporary German school of economists is exposed. descent, his ancestors, whose name was Pollok, having emigrated from Ireland in the 18th century. He was the eldest of ten children, and was born 2d November 1795 in Mecklenburg county, North Carolina, from which his father, who was a farmer, removed in 1806 to the valley of the Duck river, Tennessee. At an early age he was XIX. 51