xii PREFACE. 



of the two great civil wars are seen in the entails 

 of the fifteenth, and the settlements of the seventeenth 

 centuries, the conspiracies of lawyers and landowners 

 against needful responsibilities. The prodigality of 

 Henry, the mischievous mode in which the monastic 

 lands were redistributed, the issue of base money, and 

 the confiscation of the guild revenues, are as surely 

 the cause of English pauperism as dirt is the cause of 

 disease, or as the impoverishment of the crown, itself 

 a result of the same causes, is the origin of parlia- 

 mentary control and political liberty. It was very 

 fortunate that the timidity of Henry VII shut Eng- 

 land out from acquiring any part of central and southern 

 America, for, at a later date, her energies were di- 

 rected to those parts of the New World which now 

 constitute the great English Eepublic of the United 

 States. 



It cannot be doubted that much of the discredit 

 which attaches to political economy in the present 

 time is due to the dogmatism of writers on the subject, 

 and to their habitual disregard of facts. Most English 

 economists, with the very best intentions, have con- 

 structed their systems on what I think may be called 

 the metaphysical method, by which I mean that they 

 evolve their conclusions from their own consciousness, 

 or from unproved hypotheses, or from plausible, but 

 untried generalisations, or from vague hints or ten- 

 dencies. Not much harm, I admit, comes, whether the 

 autobiographic method which the metaphysician adopts 

 be accepted or exploded. But it is unfortunately very 



