POLITICAL ECONOMY. 



725 



disclose the operating force ; to shake off the incidental circumstances 

 of its concrete envelope, take out the principle, and formulate it for 

 use by others in subsequent explanations. The great Scotch "doc- 

 trinaire " was at once the most practical man of his time. 



Curiously enough, while Adam Smith approached political econ- 

 omy from the side of abstract and metaphysical studies, his " homely 

 sagacity " led him constantly to practical results ; but, although Ri- 

 cardo was a rich banker and a successful man of business, who had 

 early retired with a competence, he it was who, above all others, went 

 farthest in attempting to formulate the principles he had arrived at 

 from facts in a form which should state abstractly the general truths in- 

 dependent of the changing conditions in which these principles worked. 

 So that in Ricardo we have a man of business intuitions of the most 

 practical kind, but one who early showed a fondness for mathematics 

 and logical studies. Knowing only too well the myriad shapes in 

 which facts arise before us, he was urged forward by a desire to express 

 truth in a form as succinct and universal as possible. This tendency, 

 taken in connection with unusual terseness and no great literary skill in 

 exposition, has deceived people into thinking that his conclusions were 

 all deduced by an a priori process (because of his dry and peculiar 

 method of stating them) ; while, as a matter of fact, he was a hard- 

 headed man of affairs, living at a time when the Bank of England 

 restriction act and the duties on corn led him to try to find out the 

 fundamental principles which were governing the value of money and 

 the price of corn. The results of these practical investigations were 

 seen in the doctrines of the " Bullion Report," and the economic doc- 

 trines of '' Rent " and " International Trade." In this way, the work 

 of the Scotch Professor of Logic, who had a great deal of practical 

 insight, was supplemented by the study of a successful man of affairs 

 who had a strong passion for concise and abstract statement of eco- 

 nomic principles. We can not properly say of the man who was in- 

 troduced to the details of the money market at fourteen, was in busi- 

 ness on his own account at twenty-one, and was a wealthy man at 

 twenty-five, that he was a doctrinaire wholly given over to abstract 

 speculations. 



John Stuart Mill illustrates what we have said in a different way. 

 To him the fascination of abstract reasoning was so great, and the 

 bent of his mind so strongly metaphysical, that this part of the econo- 

 mist's equipment preponderated in his make-up ; his attention to the 

 facts of practical life was not excessive. And this exposes the real 

 weakness of his book. Perhaps no other systematic writer ever gained 

 such a success by perspicuous treatment, and a certain geometrical 

 symmetry in the connection of parts with a whole, as did Mr. Mill in 

 his " Principles of Political Economy," and this quality has greatly 

 added to the value of his work. But, while the abstract character 

 of many of his chapters excites admiration for a power of sustained 



