TEE STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. 601 



A large mound near the chambered mounds was also opened, and in this 

 no chambers were found. Neither had the bodies been burned. This mound 

 proved remarkably rich in large flint implements, and also contained well-made 

 pottery, and a peculiar " gorget " of red stone. The connection of the people 

 who placed the ashes of their dead in the stone chambers with those who buried 

 their dead in the earth-mounds is, of course, yet to be determined. 



THE STUDY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY * 



By HENEY GEOEGE. 



I TAKE it that these lectures are intended to be more suggestive 

 than didactic, and in what I shall have to say to you my object 

 will be merely to induce you to think for yourselves. I shall not 

 attempt to outline the laws of political economy, nor even, where my 

 own views are strong and definite, to touch upon unsettled questions. 

 But I want to show you, if I can, the simplicity and certainty of a 

 science too generally regarded as complex and indeterminate, to point 

 out the ease with which it may be studied, and to suggest reasons 

 which make that study worthy of your attention. 



Of the importance of the questions with which political economy 

 deals it is hardly necessary to speak. The science which investigates 

 the laws of the production and distribution of wealth concerns itself 

 with matters which among us occupy more than nine tenths of human 

 effort, and perhaps nine tenths of human thought. In its province 

 are included all that relates to the wages of labor and the earnings of 

 capital ; all regulations of trade ; all questions of currency and finance ; 

 all taxes and public disbursements — in short, everything that can in 

 any way affect the amount of wealth which a community can secure, 

 or the proportion in which that wealth will be distributed between 

 individuals. Though not the science of government, it is essential to 

 the science of government. Though it takes direct cognizance only 

 of what are termed the selfish instincts, yet in doing so it includes the 

 basis of all higher qualities. The laws which it aims to discover are 

 the laws by virtue of which states wax rich and populous, or grow 

 weak and decay ; the laws upon which depend the comfort, happiness, 

 and opportunities of our individual lives. And as the development of 

 the nobler part of human nature is powerfully modified by material 

 conditions, if it does not absolutely depend upon them, the laws sought 

 for by political economy are the laws which at last control the mental 

 and moral as well as the physical states of humanity. 



Clearly, this is the science which of all sciences is of the first im- 

 portance to us. Useful and sublime as are the sciences which open to 



* Lecture before the students of the University of California, April, 1877. 



