534 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



years, when we have passed beyond the arbitrary limits they accepted 

 and imposed, that it has been possible to enter on new fields of research. 

 Carl Biicher* has brought out the importance of the relations which 

 subsist between economics and anthropology, and Thorold Eogers 

 proved himself a vigorous pioneer in the interpretation of history. In 

 this fashion the whole range of the phenomena of economic life, in its 

 earlier as well as in its later forms, is being brought within the sphere 

 of scientific treatment as exhibiting various stages of growth. The 

 men of the classical period of economics, who devoted themselves to the 

 study of new countries, were not in a position to deal with the subject 

 properly, and their writings seem singularly lacking in grasp. Times 

 have changed since their day, both politically and economically. Lord 

 Brougham wrote at a date when responsible government was undreamed 

 of; he pleaded for the benevolent treatment of dependencies, and his 

 language is wholly inapplicable to the great self-governing nations, 

 which have been formed partly under English influence and partly 

 through English neglect. But none the less is his writing, and that of 

 some other enthusiasts for the development of the colonies, of abiding 

 value as a monumental warning against a sort of pseudo-philosophic 

 habit of mind. There is an underlying assumption that the one type 

 of colony he had in mind was the only one worth taking into account ; 

 he was really thinking of a particular case, but he allowed himself to 

 write of it in general terms, and thus to give an air of philosophical 

 detachment to his remarks, f In the year 1803 there were many cir- 

 cumstances that gave prominence to questions connected with the West 

 Indies; the agitation in regard to the slave trade was one, the trade 

 rivalry between the French and Spanish and English islands was an- 

 other. Brougham was thinking of the West Indies ; all that he said of 

 the dependence of these little islands on the mother country for defence, 

 of the necessity of the colonists relying on English help to repel pros- 

 pective invasions and annexation by France or Spain, was true enough ; 

 it might well lie at the basis of the economic relations between the 

 planters and the government in England, but it has no bearing on the 

 actual conditions of the great continental countries which are still 

 called colonies, and which are at least under no anxiety as to their 

 ability to repulse a foreign invader. 



The greatest of all Brougham's contemporaries who wrote on the 

 art of colonization was not exempt from a similar defect; he professed 

 to write in general terms. Few names are more deserving of honor 



* ' Arbeit und Rhythmus.' His ' Industrial Evolution ' has been translated 

 by Dr. S. M. Wickett, and I desire to acknowledge my indebtedness to the 

 volume. 



f Lord Brougham, 'The Colonial Policy of European Nations' (1803), I., 

 108. 



