ECONOMIC SCIENCE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 31 



its attitude, but not in any such thoroughgoing way as to divest 

 it of its metaphysical character. It is still a science dependent on 

 the apparatus of preconceptions and postulates. 



The leading figures in economics at the beginning of the century 

 are Malthus and Ricardo, and they, with Adam Smith, are usually 

 represented as the great triumvirate that gave to English political 

 economy the character that it has held ever since. But it seems 

 doubtful if either Malthus or Ricardo has exerted a greater influence 

 than the great Utilitarian who was the tone-giving influence in nearly 

 every department of English thought for at least one half of the 

 century. To the influence of Bentham's teaching the science 

 owes that peculiar constitution which has given rise to its charac- 

 terization as "the mechanics of natural liberty." To that same 

 influence seems due the shifting of the center of interest from the 

 analysis of production to the theory of value. To him, also, is due 

 the rapid rise to ascendency of the abstract deductive method. 

 And to his teaching in particular we owe the creation of that bond- 

 man of the science, the economic man. No doubt, other influences 

 also contributed to these changes. The incorporation of the law 

 of diminishing returns and the principle of population into the 

 premises of the science are to be especially noted. As limiting condi- 

 tions of the environment within which the economic action of man 

 was noted they also served to add emphasis to questions of value 

 and distribution, and, besides, imported a strain of pessimism into 

 economic thinking. But no other influence was paramount to the 

 influence of the new habits of thought, the foundations of which were 

 so convincingly set forth in Bentham's Principles. That influence 

 was deep and pervasive. 1 It was during the reign of Benthamite 

 utilitarianism that English political economy achieved its greatest 

 triumphs and worked its way to an authoritative position in Great 

 Britain as a foundation for public policy. 



The specific innovation that utilitarianism accomplished for 

 political economy was the substitution of utility for providential 

 design as the basis of theoretical formulations. Bentham gave to 

 that metaphysics of human nature which had already emerged in 

 Adam Smith a matchless statement, an impregnable setting. It 

 became for political economy a first principle. Adam Smith had 

 shown how the actions of individual men, each seeking his own gain, 

 inevitably promoted the public interest. But Adam Smith was no 

 utilitarian. It was to only one class of actions that he assigned 



1 It need scarcely be added that the influence upon the constitution of the 

 science here attributed to Bentham's teaching was not exercised by his own 

 economic writings, important though they were, but sprung from his general 

 philosophic standpoint, which found such ready assimilation and bore such 

 characteristic, fruitage in the institutes of economics as developed by Ricardo, 

 Senior, and McCulloch. 



