Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/747

Rh ideas as to the processes to be followed in an economic investigation. Nowhere else does he seem more clearly to show how essentially he had the power to handle a purely abstract question, such as that of method. And yet, on the other hand, it is to be noticed in his "Leading Principles," that the whole criticism, by which he amends Mr. Mill's positions—his study of value, the wages question, and international trade—shows how much more appreciation he had of the real facts of trade than Mr. Mill. Under his economic penetration the cold columns of Australian statistics, and American exports and imports, glow with brilliant illustrations of general economic laws. Armed with this firm grasp upon principles, and the ability to see their operation in practical affairs, he examined the facts of our foreign trade before 1873, and came to the conclusion that we were rapidly accumulating the material for a great financial explosion, and actually prophesied the panic which came in that year. Scarcely anywhere is there a better illustration of the success arising from the possession of these two almost wholly unlike powers of mind which I have been trying to show are essential for the highest achievement in political economy. Mr. Cairnes was an economic tight-rope walker; he could go with a cool head through airy spaces where other men became dizzy or fell to the ground. And, at the same time, he had the Englishman's sturdy respect for facts, with more than the ordinary Englishman's willingness to acquaint himself with social systems different from his own.

These economists, whose powers I have attempted to analyze, have been the ones who have contributed most to our knowledge of the principles of political economy, as they are understood to-day. Above all other writers, these men have possessed a useful economic intuition, and a respect for facts, which have given peculiar strength to their clear, abstract generalization of results in the form of universal principles. Wherever other students and writers have accomplished less, it will appear that weakness arose from their entire or partial lack of one or both of these two sets of faculties. It explains some other things also. French writers are unexcelled in the power of lucid statement; but the generalizing and less practical French are not so likely to be good economists as the more commonsense English. Therefore, while the French have never much assisted the progress of political economy, they have stated results in the most admirable way. It is, then, reasonable also to expect that the practical Americans, with their keen insight and thoughtful disposition, may also furnish the material for excellent economists, whenever they set themselves seriously to get the proper training.

It may now be worth while to explain briefly some of the evident ways by which the study of political economy disciplines the mind. It may seem somewhat startling to say of so practical a