Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 10.djvu/513

Rh has a natural and inalienable right to his personal freedom of action, to the use of his muscles, and the employment of his powers, in any manner and direction that he chooses; to contravene this is slavery. A man has a right to the use of his mind, to freedom of thought and speech; and to interfere with this is. tyranny. A man also has a natural right to freedom of exchange of the products of labor, to buy and to sell, as he pleases and where he pleases; and every arbitrary impediment to this liberty is despotism. In the advance of civilization, and through the struggles of ages, personal liberty of action and thought has been secured; but it still remains to extort from governments absolute freedom of commercial intercourse, whether on a small scale or large. Dr. Anderson paid a compliment to the great abstract thinkers—Grotius, Smith, and Bentham—who, although only scholars and philosophers, have exerted a powerful influence upon the modern world; and he stated that free-trade doctrines are now taught in all our best colleges so efficiently that this influence will be certain to tell in the future settlement of the question.

Prof. Sumner took up, briefly, the present state of political economy, and remarked upon its incompleteness and the conflict of views that has recently sprung up in regard to its scope, its validity, and its permanence. While many of its questions will have to be further elucidated, while much that was at first laid down as true has required revision, and while other forms of knowledge are reacting upon and modifying it, Prof. Sumner is of the opinion that political economy must stand in the future as an established division in the classified hierarchy of the sciences.

Mr. Sanborn, of Boston, followed this line of thought in some remarks on the relation of political economy to social science. In that closer interdependence of the various forms of knowledge which has resulted from scientific investigation our views become enlarged, and it is apparent that these subjects must more and more be considered together. Political economy will suffer if studied exclusively, or with no reference to that philosophy of man and society of which it is but a part.

Dr. Leverson closed the speechmaking by an appeal to introduce the study of the rudiments of political economy in our schools. He testified, from his own large experience as a lecturer, both in England and in this country, that pupils in schools may be very early interested in an elementary knowledge of economics, or of the sources of familiar things and the business operations by which they are procured. He thought this was the proper place to begin the study of social science.

necessity of associated action for the attainment of desirable and important public objects is generally understood, as is shown by the numerous societies and organizations for the promotion of religious, political, philanthropic, literary, historical, and scientific objects. The directions taken by such associations in respect to the interests to be promoted are, of course, various, and well represent the state of intelligence, the culture, the mental preoccupations and aspirations, of the community in which such societies are formed. As regards science, the organization of societies for its promotion has mainly had for its object the encouragement and aid of original observation and research; and, as men devoted to independent inquiry are not numerous, and are widely scattered, such associations are neither large in number nor strong in their