544 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



to go into the consideration of the impossibility of 

 ascertaining from history, or even from contemporary 

 observation, that such is really the fact; that the 

 nations agree in no other circumstance capable of in- 

 fluencing the case. Let us suppose this impossibility 

 vanquished, and the fact ascertained that they agreed 

 only in a restrictive system as an antecedent, and 

 industrial prosperity as a consequent. What degree 

 of presumption does this raise, that the restrictive 

 system caused the prosperity? One so trifling as to 

 be equivalent to none at all. That some one ante- 

 cedent is the cause of a given effect, because all other 

 antecedents have been found capable of being elimi- 

 nated, is a just inference, only if the effect can have 

 but one cause. If it admits of several, nothing is 

 more natural than that each of these should sepa- 

 rately admit of being eliminated. Now, in the case 

 of political phenomena, the supposition of unity 

 of cause is not only wide of the truth, but at an 

 immeasurable distance from it. The causes of every 

 social phenomenon which we are particularly interested 

 about, security, wealth, freedom, good government, 

 public virtue, public intelligence, or their opposites, 

 are infinitely numerous: especially the external or 

 remote causes, which alone are, for the most part, 

 accessible to direct observation. No one cause suf- 

 fices of itself to produce any one of these phenomena ; 

 while there are countless causes which have some in- 

 fluence over them, and may co-operate either in their 

 production or in their prevention. From the mere 

 fact, therefore, of our having been able to eliminate 

 some circumstances, we can by no means infer that 

 this circumstance was not instrumental to the effect 

 even in the very instances from which we have elimi- 

 nated it. We may conclude that the effect is some- 



