12 



POLITICAL ECONOMY. 



By E. C. NowKLL, Government Statistician and Clerk to tlic? 



Legislative Council. Read 14th May, 1872. 



Few subjects are so generally misunderstood as political 

 economy ; and not only among the masses is ignorance of its 

 simplest principles found, but even among those who aspire 

 to be the leaders of public opinion. And yet, no branch of 

 knowledge is more necessary for that large class of men whose 

 province it is to direct or to influence the destinies of States 

 by wielding the Executive and Legislative powers, by in- 

 structing the people, and by ministering in the way of 

 commerce, to its wants. Our educational systems are much 

 to blame for this defect. For while such sciences as philology, 

 geology, botany and zoology, which have a cornparativelt/ 

 remote bearing on the welfare of a country, receive, and justly 

 receive, a full share of attention, that of political economy, 

 which closely concerns the supply of our physical wants, 

 and in consequence, our material well-being, and has even 

 an important bearing on our moral condition ; which shows 

 how communities are bound together in the bonds of brother- 

 hood by the ties of a common interest, teaching in the most 

 practical manner that each is but a part of the whole; and 

 how on the other hand by setting itself in antagonism to the 

 laws established by supreme wisdom, mistaken self-interest 

 not only breeds discord between different countries, but causes 

 a serious loss of national wealth, — this science, I say, has 

 been greatly neglected. " God meant man," says one of the 

 most able and earnest of living writers, " to learn more and 

 more continually of his need and ministry of other men for the 

 completion of his life. He meant to biad the tribes and the 

 nations together in a sweet interchange of gifts and influences, 

 man leaning on man, people on people, continent on continent, 

 each increasing the other's store, and gaining in return 

 increase of its own 



" Commerce has failed signally in her peaceful and benign 

 ministry, because her activity has been degraded into a 

 selfish scramble for profit. She will never comprehend her 

 true position until she understands that she holds a commis- 

 sion from God to minister to the brotherly intercourse, and 

 to cement the brotherly relations of men." [" Buying, Selling, 

 and Getting Gain," by Rev. J. Baldwin Brown, p. 9.] 



If the mission of Commerce be so lofty and so beneficent, 

 the laws to which it is amenable, it must be an object of the 

 deepest importance to discover ; and this is one of the branches 

 of Political Economy. 



Could men be induced to act upon these just and noble 



