Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/104

 84 observation and reflection. 'The speculative person,' he says, 'who removed from the practice extracts the principle of this science from observation and reflection, should divest himself as far as possible of every prejudice in favour of established opinions however reasonable when examined relatively to particular nations; he must do his utmost to become a citizen of the world, comparing customs, examining minutely institutions which appear alike when in different countries they are found to produce different effects; he should examine the cause of such differences with the utmost diligence and attention; it is from such inquiries that the true principles are discovered. Not only must he take account of the present but of the past, and by so doing he may be able to follow "the regular progress of mankind from great simplicity to complicated refinement." ' In this way he believed that he might obtain a science of which the principles were 'universally true,' and it would then be the business of the statesman to direct the industry and commerce of any given people in the closest practicable accord with those principles. 'The principal object of this science is to secure a certain fund of subsistence for all the inhabitants, to obviate every circumstance which may render it precarious, to provide everything necessary for supplying the wants of the society, and to employ the inhabitants in such a manner as naturally to create reciprocal relations and dependencies between them, so as to make their several interests lead them to supply one another with their reciprocal wants.' It must, however, be confessed that in plunging into this sea of 'metapolitical' speculation, Sir James Steuart fails to attain very important results. He did, indeed, make important contributions to particular doctrines; but his general art of political economy and his general maxims are for the most part mere truisms, for which he is himself inclined to apologize; and his imaginary history of the development of human civilization is but dull reading after all. He had come deeply under the influence of Montesquieu, and the effect of the Spirit of Laws is obvious over and over again,—in particular, in the attention he gives to the spirit of a people. 'The great art of governing,' he says, 'is to divest oneself of prejudices and attachments to particular opinions, particular classes, and above all to particular persons, to consult the spirit of the people, to give way to it in appearance, and in so doing to give it a turn capable of inspiring those sentiments which may induce them to relish the change which an alteration of circumstances has rendered necessary.' Statesmen were to guide