624 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



Political Economy, as I have said on another occasion, concerns itself 

 only with " such of the phenomena of the social state as take place in con- 

 sequence of the pursuit of wealth. It makes entire abstraction of every 

 other human passion or motive ; except those which may be regarded as 

 perpetually antagonizing principles to the desire of wealth, namely, aversion 

 to labor, and desire of the present enjoyment of costly indulgences. These 

 it takes, to a certain extent, into its calculations, because these do not 

 merely, like our other desires, occasionally conflict with the pursuit of 

 wealth, but accompany it always as a drag or impediment, and are there- 

 fore inseparably, mixed up in the consideration of it. Political Economy 

 considers mankind as occupied solely in acquiring and consuming wealth ; 

 and aims at showing what is the course of action into which mankind, 

 living in a state of society, would be impelled, if that motive, except in the 

 degree in which it is checked by the two perpetual counter-motives above 

 adverted to, were absolute ruler of all their actions. Under the influ- 

 ence of this desire, it shows mankind accumulating wealth, and employing 

 that wealth in the production of other wealth ; sanctioning by mutual 

 agreement the institution of property; establishing laws to prevent indi- 

 viduals from encroaching upon the property of others by force or fraud ; 

 adopting various contrivances for increasing the productiveness of their 

 labor; settling the division of the produce by agreement, under the influ- 

 ence of competition (competition itself being governed by certain laws, 

 which laws are therefore the ultimate regulators of the division of the 

 produce) ; and employing certain expedients (as money, credit, etc.) to 

 facilitate the distribution. All these operations, though many of them are 

 really the result of a plurality of motives, are considered by political econ- 

 omy as flowing solely from the desire of wealth. The science then pro- 

 ceeds to investigate the laws which govern these several operations, under 

 the supposition that man is a being who is determined, by the necessity 

 of his nature, to prefer a greater portion of wealth to a smaller, in all cases, 

 without any other exception than that constituted by the two counter- 

 motives already specified. Not that any political economist was ever so 

 absurd as to suppose that mankind are really thus constituted, but because 

 this is the mode in which science must necessarily proceed. When an 

 effect depends on a concurrence of causes, these causes must bo studied 

 one at a time, and their laws separately investigated, if we wish, through 

 the causes, to obtain the power of either predicting or controlling the 

 effect; since the law of the effect is compounded of the laws of all the 

 causes which determine it. The law of the centripetal and that of the 

 projectile force must have been known, before the motions of the earth 

 and planets could be explained, or many of them predicted. The same is 

 the case with the conduct of man in society. In order to judge how he 

 will act under the variety of desires and aversions which are concurrently 

 operating upon him, we must know how he would act under the exclusive 

 influence of each one in particular; There is, perhaps, no action of a man's 

 life in which he is neither under the immediate nor under the remote in- 

 fluence of any impulse but the mere desire of wealth. With respect to 

 those parts of human conduct of which wealth is not even the principal 

 object, to these political economy does not pretend that its conclusions are 

 applicable. But there are also certain departments of human affairs, in 

 which the acquisition of wealth is the main and acknowledged end. It is 

 only of these that political economy takes notice. The manner in which it 

 necessarily proceeds is that of treating the main and acknowledged end as 



