274 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Modern commerce properly begins with 

 the rise of the Italian commercial cities, 

 and thence onward it moves steadily if 

 slowly. Its theory is the mercantile system. 

 Nations only grow rich by despoiling each 

 other, and money is alone riches. This 

 theory, once universal, has not even yet 

 disappeared. It has survived the clearest 

 demonstrations of its falsity, and influences 

 to-day much of the speculation and legis- 

 lation upon economical matters. The first 

 important school to combat it, and to lead 

 the way to a true theory of wealth, was 

 that of the Economists, which arose in 

 France just after the disastrous failure of 

 Law's scheme. Quesnay was one of its 

 founders and most distinguished represen- 

 tatives. It found prepared for it a soil in 

 which it readily took root and flourished. 

 Law's failure had produced an entire re- 

 vulsion in French sentiment. " People," 

 says M. Blanqui, " had for some time 

 deemed money to be wealth in an especial 

 sense ; . . . there were henceforth no 

 true riches but land." The Economists 

 came preaching this doctrine. To them 

 agriculture was the only productive occu- 

 pation. " Manufacturers, traders, work- 

 men, were all paid clerks of agriculture, 

 which was the sovereign creator and dis- 

 penser of all wealth." Landed proprie- 

 tors were rightly preeminent over all other 

 classes. They reaped all wealth ; they 

 should, therefore, pay all taxes. Hence 

 the Economists would have but one tax 

 that upon land. And the same reasoning 

 led them to entire freedom of trade. Able 

 men rallied to the support of the new views, 

 and there gradually grew up a body of 

 statesmen imbued with them, one of whom, 

 Turgot, was to attempt to carry their for- 

 mulas into practice. 



The Economists were mistaken. They 

 failed to see that wealth can be created 

 by labor ; they were blinded by their doc- 

 trine of the importance of land, but they 

 have rendered great service. " Their books 

 are forgotten ; but their doctrines have 

 germinated like a good seed, and the pre- 

 cepts which they taught have made the cir- 

 cuit of the world, freed the industrial arts, 

 restored agriculture, and prepared the way 

 for commercial liberty." It was reserved 

 for Adam Smith to see clearly what the 

 Economists saw dimly, to correct their errors 



by a true analysis of the phenomena of 

 wealth, and to place economics on an en- 

 during foundation. He restored to labor 

 the position of a creator of wealth denied 

 it by the Economists, and he first pointed 

 out clearly the results of the division of 

 labor. He placed commercial liberty upon 

 an impregnable basis, and showed how pri- 

 vate interest freed from restrictions works 

 for the best welfare of the individual and 

 society. Great as was his genius, " Adam 

 Smith did not, however, have the honor 

 of creating political economy at a single 

 stroke " ; but he laid the foundation upon 

 which his successors securely built. The 

 Economists had given to land too prominent 

 a place ; he gave it to labor. This his fol- 

 lowers corrected : they adjusted the parts, 

 recognized the place of capital, and devel- 

 oped the science symmetrically. But they 

 all failed to recognize sufficiently the wel- 

 fare of the worker. They all regarded him 

 too exclusively in the light of an economic 

 machine for the production of wealth. This 

 error the economists of the French school 

 have corrected. They have insisted that 

 the value of increase of wealth is to be un- 

 ceasingly judged by what it brings to the 

 workers, and they withhold their admiration 

 if the thing it brings be not good : " We are 

 to-day obliged to seek a regulator, and to put 

 a curb on those gigantic instruments of pro- 

 duction which feed and which starve men, 

 which clothe and which despoil them, which 

 relieve and which crush them. The question 

 is no longer, as in the time of Smith, exclu- 

 sively that of accelerating production : the 

 latter must henceforth be governed and re- 

 stricted within wise limits. The question 

 is no longer of absolute wealth, but of rela- 

 tive wealth ; humanity demands that masses 

 of men who will not profit thereby be no 

 longer sacrificed to the progress of public 

 opulence. Thus decree the eternal laws of 

 justice and morality, too long disregarded 

 in the social distribution of the profits and 

 the labors ; and we will no longer consent 

 to give the name of wealth save to the sum 

 of the national product equitably distributed 

 between all the producers. Such is the 

 French school of political economy to which 

 we profess to belong, and its ideas will 

 make the circuit of the world." 



The above will, perhaps, give some idea 

 of the general spirit and drift of M. Blan- 



