POLICE COURT 



6224 



POLITICAL ECONOMY 



Prince de Polignac, 

 French politician 



Police Court. Court of the first 

 instance or court of summary juris- 

 diction. In London and some other 

 towns such courts are presided over 

 by stipendiary magistrates, and 

 they are dealt with in this work 

 under Metropolitan police courts. 

 The judges of other police courts 

 are styled justices of the peace and 

 are unpaid. See Justice; Magistrate. 

 Polignac, AUGUSTE JULES AR- 

 MAND MABIE, PRINCE DE (1780- 

 1847). French politician. Ron of 

 Jules, due de 

 Polignac (1745 

 -1817), he was 

 born May 14, 

 1780, and 

 spent his 

 early years in 

 exile in Russia 

 and England. 

 He was im- 

 prisoned 

 for participa- 

 tion in the Pichegru conspiracy, 

 1804, but returned on the restora- 

 tion, 1814. Made peer of France.. 

 1815, lie was ambassador in London, 

 1823-29, when he became minister 

 of foreign affairs under Charles X. 

 He promulgated the Ordinances of 

 St. Cloud which precipitated the re- 

 volution of 1830. Condemned to life 

 imprisonment in that year, he was 

 pardoned, 1836, published his 

 Etudes Historiques, Politiques et 

 Morales, 1845, and died March 

 2, 1847. Pron. Po-linyak. 



Polignac, MELCHIOR DE (1661- 

 1742). French cardinal and "diplo- 

 mat. Born at Puy-en-Velay, Oct. 

 11, 1661, he 

 showed bril- 

 liant scholar- 

 ship at the 

 College d e 

 Clermont and 

 was present at 

 the papal elec- 

 tions in 1689 

 and 1692. Am- 

 bassador t o 

 Poland, and 

 subsequently 



M. de Polignac, 

 Fiencb cardinal 



plenipotentiary in 

 Holland, he negotiated the treaty 

 of Utrecht, and became cardinal in 

 1713. Forced into retirement dur- 

 ing the regency, he was, however, 

 diplomatic representative in Rome, 

 1 725-32, and was made archbishop 

 of Auch, 1726. A man of consider- 

 able literary ability, he was mem- 

 ber of the Academic Fran9aise, 

 1704, and his Latin poem, Anti- 

 Lucretius, appeared in 1745. He 

 died in Paris, April 3, 1742. 



Poligny. Town of France. In 

 the dept. of Jura, it is picturesquely 

 situated at the foot of the Jura 

 Mts., 38 m. S.W. of Besa^on. It 

 contains the ruins of a chateau, and 

 the early Gothic church of S. Hip- 

 polyte. Trade is carried on in wine 



and agricultural products, and 

 there are oil refineries. The town 

 was captured several times during 

 the wars of religion. Pop. 4,000. 



Poliomyelitis. Acute anterior 

 poliomyelitis is an infectious dis- 

 ease, most frequently attacking 

 children. Chronic poliomyelitis is a 

 disease of adults characterised by 

 increasing atrophy of the muscles. 

 See Infantile Paralysis. 



Polish. Substance for improv- 

 ing the appearance of woodwork, 

 metal work, leather, etc. A fine 



surface used to be given to wood 

 by mere friction, mahogany, for 

 instance, being treated by passing 

 a heavily padded slab of stone 

 backwards and forwards over a sur- 

 face powdered with brick dust. 

 This method gave a beautifully soft 

 glow to the wood, and threw up its 

 colour. French polish is the one 

 now in general use, while oak and 

 a number of other woods are 

 polished with wax. See French 

 Polish ; Furniture Polish ; Metal 

 Polish ; Plate Powder. 



POLITICAL ECONOMY & ITS TEACHERS 



Sir W. J. Ashley, Professor of Commerce. Birmingham University 



See the articles on the various terms used in political economy, e.g. 



Capital ; Labour ; Land ; Rent ; Wages : Wealth ; also the 



biographies of leading economists, e.g. Mill ; Ricardo ; Smith, 



Adam. See also Socialism 



The term political economy as 

 the subject of a treatise was 

 apparently first used by a French 

 writer, Montchretien, in 1615 ; but it 

 did not begin to come into general 

 use till the second half of the 18th 

 century. For the last hundred 

 years political economy has usually 

 been defined as the science con- 

 cerned with the production, distri- 

 bution, and consumption of wealth. 

 After distribution has often been 

 added exchange; each of the sub- 

 stantives in the definition being 

 used in a special sense. The defini- 

 tion owes its vogue to the first 

 systematically arranged and lucidly 

 written text-book of Political 

 Economy, also by a Frenchman, 

 J. B. Say, 1803 ; to whom it was 

 probably suggested by the title of 

 the widely read articles of Turgot, 

 Reflections on the Formation and 

 Distribution of Wealth, 1770. 



The substance of Say's book, 

 however, was little more than a 

 popularisation of the great work of 

 Adam Smith. Smith's Inquiry into 

 the Nature and Causes of the 

 Wealth of Nations, 1776, has been 

 incomparably the most influential 

 of all economic writings, determin- 

 ing the character and scope of the 

 new science almost up to the 

 present. Without essential origin- 

 ality or real profundity, Smith 

 seized and retained the attention 

 of contemporaries and succeeding 

 generations because of the judge- 

 ment and literary skill with which 

 he acted, as it were, as editorial 

 secretary to a vast movement of 

 thought struggling to find expres- 

 sion, and destined deeply to affect 

 human society. 



Earliest in its influence on Smith 

 was the natural law or natural 

 jurisprudence, which was among 

 the main subjects of his teaching as 

 professor of moral philosophy at 

 Glasgow University. The origins of 

 this jurisprudence in the philo- 

 sophy of the Greeks, especially of 



the Stoics, and in the labours of the 

 Roman legists, are traced in the 

 earlier chapters of Maine's Ancient 

 Law. For the modern world its 

 creator was Grotius. 



In The Law of War and Peace, 

 1625, by Grotius, appeared a 

 chapter on contract ; and in that 

 chapter there was a brief section 

 upon the causes determining the 

 price of commodities. This forms 

 the starting point of all that econo- 

 mists have written since on the sub- 

 ject of value. As university life re- 

 vived hi Western Europe, and as 

 the conspicuous growth of trade 

 and the substitution of money con- 

 tracts for feudal obligations forced 

 new topics upon the attention of 

 university teachers, these few sen- 

 tences of Grotius were more and 

 more commented on and expanded 

 The treatise of Pufendorf, The Law 

 of Nature and Nations, 1672, which 

 quickly became the leading au- 

 thority on natural jurisprudence, 

 devoted a whole chapter to the 

 subject of price. At Glasgow, 

 Pufendorf's teaching was adopted 

 and enlarged by Hutcheson. Adam 

 Smith was his admiring auditor 

 and reader ; and as professor him- 

 self between 1752 and 1763, he 

 went over the same ground in the 

 same spirit. The chapters on 

 value and price, set near the fore- 

 front of The Wealth of Nations, are 

 an enlarged reproduction of ideas 

 derived through Hutcheson and 

 Pufendorf from Grotius. 



This is the historical explanation 

 of the place subsequently assigned 

 to value in economic text-books. It 

 is true that with Smith the chap- 

 ters on value have little bearing on 

 the teachings of the rest of the 

 book. But they did much to create 

 and confirm in his successors the 

 habit of conceiving of the economic 

 world as a world exclusively domi- 

 nated by contract, and by con- 

 tract between individuals stand- 

 ing, in respect of their bargaining, 



