PHYSICAL METHOD. 625 



if it were the sole end ; which, of all hypotheses equally simple, is the near- 

 est to the truth. The political economist inquires, what are tiie actions 

 which would be produced by this desire, if within the departments in 

 question it were unimpeded by any other. In this way a nearer approx- 

 imation is obtained than would otherwise be practicable to the real order 

 of human affairs in those departments. This approximation has then to 

 be corrected by making proper allowance for the effects of any impulses 

 of a different description, which can be shown to interfere with the result 

 in any particular case. Only in a few of the most striking cases (such as 

 the important one of the principle of population) are these corrections in- 

 terpolated into the expositions of political economy itself; the strictness 

 of purely scientific arrangement being thereby somewhat departed from, 

 for the sake of practical utility. So far as it is known, or may be pre- 

 sumed, that the conduct of mankind in the pursuit of wealth is under the 

 collateral influence of any other of the properties of our nature than the 

 desire of obtaining the greatest quantity of wealth with the least labor 

 and self-denial, the conclusions of political economy will so far fail of being 

 applicable to the explanation or prediction of real events, until they are 

 modified by a correct allowance for the degree of influence exercised by 

 the other cause."* 



Extensive and important practical guidance may be derived, in any. given 

 state of society, from general propositions such as those above indicated; 

 even though the modifying influence of the miscellaneous causes which the 

 theory does not take into account, as well as the effect of the general social 

 changes in progress, be provisionally overlooked. And though it has been 

 a very common error of political economists to draw conclusions from the 

 elements of one state of society, and apply them to other states in which 

 many of the elements are not the same, it is even then not diflicult, by 

 tracing back the demonstrations, and introducing the new premises in 

 their proper places, to make the same general course of argument which 

 served for the one case, serve for the others too. 



For example, it has been greatly the custom of English political econ- 

 omists to discuss the laws of the distribution of the produce of industry, 

 on a supposition which is scarcely realized anywhere out of England and 

 Scotland, namely, that the produce is " shared among three classes, altogeth- 

 er distinct from one another, laborers, capitalists, and landlords; and that 

 all these are free agents, permitted in law and in fact to set upon their la- 

 bor, their capital, and their land, whatever price they are able to get for it. 

 The conclusions of the science, being all adapted to a society thus consti- 

 tuted, require to be revised whenever they are applied to any other. They 

 are inapplicable where the only capitalists are the landlords, and the labor- 

 ers are their property, as in slave countries. They are inapplicable where 

 the almost universal landlord is the state, as in India. They are inappli- 

 cable where the ai'gricultural laborer 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 ex- 

 isting race of political economists " that they attempt to construct a per- 

 manent 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 



* JSssays on some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy, pp. 137-140. 



40 



