POLITICAL ECONOMY AS A MORAL SCIENCE. 



321 



teachings of the science as not only true but im- 

 portant truths, cannot ignore the general neglect 

 into which it has fallen, and it behooves them to 

 investigate the cause of it. When a case is ar- 

 gued fully, as that of political economy has been 

 during the last century, and the listeners remain 

 unconvinced, there seem to be only two possible 

 alternatives — either that the statements are un- 

 true, or that they have been badly expressed. 

 The latter appears to me to be the true explana- 

 tion, and this paper is not an attempt to establish 

 any new doctrine, but only to express the old 

 truths in a better way It merely claims to de- 

 lineate a new method of treatment, and indeed 

 one that is not wholly new : at most it seeks to 

 maintain consistently a point of view which has 

 been fitfully adopted in popular treatises on the 

 subject. 



I. VARIOUS VIEWS OF THE SCIENCE. 



(a.) In its earliest beginnings, in the dark 

 ages which preceded Bishop Berkeley, Hume, ' 

 and Adam Smith, political economy, with its mer- 

 cantile system, was a science of things. Value 

 was supposed to be an intrinsic quality of cer- 

 tain objects ; and a nation seemed to become 

 rich by getting objects which possessed this qual- 

 ity in a high degree. All the ingenuity of the 

 day was directed to the acquiring of valuable 

 objects, at first by the somewhat crude method 

 of compelling merchants to bring gold here and 

 forbidding them to take it hence, till at length 

 Sir Thomas Mun showed the shortsightedness of 

 this policy, and explained how gold might be 

 made to flow into the country. Then followed 

 attempts to protect native industry, as the means 

 for manipulating the exchanges and obtaining a 

 large share of objects of high intrinsic value. 



(6.) Though Adam Smith proved the unten- 

 ableness of the old views, and dwelt on the fact 

 that a nation which has many not very valuable 

 things is richer than one which has a few very 

 valuable ones, he hardly saw the true theory 

 which, while implied in much of his teaching, 

 was explicitly stated by Ricardo. Value is not a 

 quality, but a relation — a relation between this 

 object and desirable things in general. This 

 being so, we cannot found our science on a mere 

 consideration of things : we must look at that 

 which gives a value to the things, and that is, 

 the competition of actual owners and would-be 

 owners. We have not to do with the mere, prac- 

 tical usefulness of the objects, still less with in- 

 trinsic Taluableness, but with a value which is 

 conferred upon useful objects by the competition 

 93 



of various human beings who find difficulty in 

 obtaining them. 



It is thus that the questions of exchange have 

 come to be fundamental ones in the science, since 

 competition lies at the root of the notion of 

 value. What J. S. Mill calls the " necessities 

 created by social arrangements " has made ex- 

 change a fundamental fact in all the production 

 of wealth. It is not wholly possible to distin- 

 guish the competition of man with man which 

 drives most of us to work, from the competition 

 of seller with seller which drives down price. 

 The free flow of labor from one employment to 

 another, the free flow of capital also, are assump- 

 tions which the doctrines of Ricardo involve : 

 each individual human being is represented as 

 the owner of something, of labor which he ex- 

 changes for sustenance, or wealth which he ad- 

 vances in return for the products of labor; by 

 their competition with one another, the share of 

 each competitor and the value of objects are de- 

 termined. The ordinary doctrines of the school 

 of Ricardo are expressed with some confusion in 

 the popular text-books on the subject ; to these 

 we shall shortly revert. But with the view of 

 exposing the inadequacy of this teaching it may 

 be best to refer to it in the clear and consistent 

 shape in which it has been worked out by Prof. 

 Jevons. He insists that political economy por- 

 trays the " mechanism of interests," and is prop- 

 erly a mathematical science, dealing with quan- 

 titative differences. Since each individual is 

 swayed in his commercial transactions by consid- 

 erations of utility, i. e., by the anticipation of 

 greater or less quantities of (high or low) pleas- 

 ure, the ratio of exchange is said to be deter- 

 mined by the competition of various individuals^ 

 or groups of individuals, guided solely by con- 

 siderations of utility. 



Numerous objections may be urged against 

 the science when thus treated. One of the com- 

 monest is perhaps a sentimental one — that polit- 

 ical economy is a science of selfishness; and 

 though Prof. Cairnes has repudiated this charge 

 on the ground that the science is merely descrip- 

 tive and does not enjoin any kind of conduct, the 

 mode of treatment before us gives some color for 

 the ordinary view. Prof. Jevons speaks of the 

 science as if it were utilitarian ; but only the 

 cruder forms of utilitarianism concern themselves 

 solely with degrees of intensity ; and our atten- 

 tion is concentrated on the motive — individual 

 gain, rather than the end — the happiness of the 

 greatest number. This gives economical teach- 

 ing — when considered in its moral aspect — the 



