Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/652

 630 TH BCONOMIC JOURN.aL direction will probably be afforded by the theory of consumers' rent which is connected with the names of Marshall and Dupuit: from the view that members of a community have an interest in each others' expenditure; that regulations encouraging the con- shmption of much-manufactured commodities rather than rawer material are primd facie expedient; and that the success of a government work as a business undertaking is not the pecuniary measure of its advantage to the community. But while we indulge these general views, we must ever remember that they are but distant. It is only at the heights that contemplation ' reigns and revels.' The descent to particulars is broken and treacherous; requiring caution, patience, attention to each step. Those who without regarding what is immediately before them, have looked away to general views, have slipped. It is worth while to consider why the path of applied economic is so slippery; and how it is possible to combine an enthusiastic admiration of theory with the coldest hesitation in practice. The explanation may be partly given in the words of a distinguished logician who has well and quaintly said that, if a malign spirit sought to annihilate the whole fabric of useful knowledge with the least effort and change, it would by no means be necessary that he should abrogate the laws of nature. The links of the chain of causation need not be corroded. Like effects shall still follow like causes; only like causes shall no longer occur in collocation. Every case is to be singular; every species, like the fabled Phoenix, to be unique, Now most of our practical problems have this character of singularity; every burning ques- tion is a Phoenix in the sense of being sui geeris. Vv'e have laws almost as simple and majestic as that of gravitation, in particular those relating to value and distribution;but these laws do not afford middle axioms, such as the proposition that planets move in ellipses deduced from the law of gravitation. So dense is the resisting medium which obstructs the free move- ment of the market; and not only in general dense, but also variable from case to case. The impediments to free competi- tion are different in labour market; and estimated so as to the cases of the money market and the not very easy in any case to be accurately allow of scientific prediction. Repeated experiments in exactly similar conditions, such as those by which a physicist obtains empirical laws for the resistance of the atmosphere to projectiles, are not available in the practice of political economy. Often indeed the resisting medium is invisible as air, and