UNCONSCIOUS ASSUMPTIONS IN ECONOMICS. 535 



than that of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, and there is something very 

 extraordinary in the contrast between the strong practical sense which 

 distinguished him as a man of action, and the doctrinnaire spirit which 

 pervades his writings. He fell into the error which characterized the 

 classical school when they dealt with practical problems, and general- 

 ized from the special conditions of his own day.* There was, to Wake- 

 field's mind, one, and one only, method of successful colonization; all 

 others were to be condemned in so far as they departed from the true 

 system which he had devised. Wakefield, too, was the victim of uncon- 

 scious assumptions; the type of colony he had in mind was a white 

 man's country, in which raw produce might be obtained for export. 

 He showed under what conditions Australia, Tasmania and New Zea- 

 land might be most successfully developed;! but his scheme is certainly 

 unsuited to tropical regions, and it need not necessarily be preferable 

 to the alternative of developing a community on the lines of subsistence 

 farming. On this point at least we can make a very definite com- 

 parison: Virginia, Carolina and Georgia have all been colonies which 

 raised such commodities as tobacco and rice and cotton for export; 

 they started more rapidly than the New England colonies, where the 

 settlers were engaged in subsistence farming; but as we look at these 

 states at the present time, we can hardly say that the type of com- 

 munity to which Wakefield devoted exclusive attention is that which 

 has given rise to the most healthy and vigorous economic life. 



Even Adam Smith, in writing of the growth of societies, fell into 

 a similar error; he passed out of the region of actual life, where he 

 showed himself such a master, and attempted to discourse in a pseudo- 

 philosophical strain on the manner in which countries ought to have 

 developed, but never had. He allowed himself to elaborate an account 

 of a supposed natural progress of opulence, which might have occurred 

 in an isolated state. There is scope for a pretty play of fancy and 

 much elegant writing in such a theme, but no attempt was made to 

 show that isolated states ever do develop, so long as they remain iso- 

 lated. Much may be said for the view that the chief stimulus to devel- 

 opment is supplied by contact with communities on a different plane of 

 economic conditions. In the history of England there are long periods 

 of apparent stagnation and decline, and occasional epochs of rapid 

 advance ; but, whether in the days of the Danes or the Norman kings, 

 of the Edwards or the Georges, the opening up of new trading relations 

 has been the impetus to internal development. Economic experts are 

 not even yet acquainted with philosophical principles as to the manner 

 in which communities ought to develop, and therefore we are not justi- 



* Cunningham, * Growth of English Industry and Commerce in Modern 

 Times,' p. 740. 



t E. G. Wakefield, * Art of Colonization.' 



