Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/803

Rh notorious Tariff Act), has made some important changes, but the root of the evil is untouched, and the administrative problem is made still harder by the imperfect organization of the official staff.

The opening chapters on the history of the colonial and eighteenth century tariff-administration are an instructive study in financial development, and lead us to hope for further work in the same field from the author.

and political economy have more than a name in common. Politics include what Dr. Sidgwick has called 'the Art of Political Economy.' There are indeed who maintain that the only action of the statesman respecting the production and distribution of wealth is to refrain from action: that the art of political economy is to suppress art. But this unqualified principle of laissez faire is far from Dr. Sidgwick. Even assuming that to maximise the amount of wealth irrespectively of its distribution were the only object, he denies that the policy of let alone would be the best means of realising the end proposed. He brings up again against the position of the extreme individualist the weighty masses of argument which were marshalled in his Political Economy. There is first the consideration that 'the individualistic argument, even if fully granted, would only justify appropriation to the labourer, and free exchange, of the utilities produced by labour; it affords no direct justification for the appropriation of natural resources.' Again individuals may not be able to remunerate themselves by the sale of utilities which it is for the general interest that they should render to society, in cases like the following: forests maintained by private landowners who cannot exact any return for the benefit conferred on the community by the favourable influence of the forests upon the climate; or advances in scientific knowledge which are not likely to remunerate the discoverer if treated as marketable commodities. Again there is the waste of time and trouble in forming business connexion which seems inevitable under a competitive system—the sums spent in advertisements and in the promotion of joint-stock companies. Again in the absence of governmental control the evils of monopoly may become rampant; especially in these days of trusts and combinations. Again it may be the interest of all shopkeepers to close their shops on Sundays and holidays, provided the closing were universal; but, without the enforcement of that proviso, it may be the interest of a few to steal custom by keeping their shops open; Sunday labour being taken as representative of a class of cases among which our author would perhaps, like Mill (Pol. Econ., Book V., ch. ix., p. 19.), include the regulation of the hours of labour. Again the Government, being financially more stable than