PHYSICAL METHOD. 497 



state as in India. They are inapplicable where the agricul- 

 tural labourer is generally the owner both of the land itself and 

 of the capital, as frequently in France, or of the capital only, 

 as in Ireland." But though it may often be very justly objected 

 to the existing race of political economists " that they attempt 

 to construct a permanent fabric out of transitory materials ; 

 that they take for granted the immutability of arrangements 

 of society, many of which are in their nature fluctuating or 

 progressive, and enunciate with as little qualification as if 

 they were universal and absolute truths, propositions which 

 are perhaps applicable to no state of society except the parti- 

 cular one in which the writer happened to live ;" this does not 

 take away the value of the propositions, considered with re- 

 ference to the state of society from which they were drawn. 

 And even as applicable to other states of society, " it must not 

 be supposed that the science is so incomplete and unsatis- 

 factory as this might seem to prove. Though many of its 

 conclusions are only locally true, its method of investigation 

 is applicable universally ; and as whoever has solved a certain 

 number of algebraic equations, can without difficulty solve all 

 others of the same kind, so whoever knows the political eco- 

 nomy of England, or even of Yorkshire, knows that of all 

 nations, actual or possible, provided he have good sense 

 enough not to expect the same conclusion to issue from vary- 

 ing premises." Whoever is thoroughly master of the laws 

 which, under free competition, determine the rent, profits, and 

 wages, received by landlords, capitalists, and labourers, in a 

 state of society in which the three classes are completely sepa- 

 rate, will have no difficulty in determining the very different 

 laws which regulate the distribution of the produce among the 

 classes interested in it, in any of the states of cultivation and 

 landed property set forth in the foregoing extract.* 



4. I would not here undertake to decide what other 

 hypothetical or abstract sciences similar to Political Economy, 



* The quotations in this paragraph are from a paper written by the author, 

 and published in a periodical in 1834. 

 VOL. II. 32 



