The Political Economist and the Land. i 29 



different aspect. He disliked the landed system because it 

 interfered, he believed, with the freedom of action of the 

 producer. He disliked the landlords, because he imagined 

 that any encouragement which the State might extend to 

 agriculture must find its way into their pockets ; and he 

 doubly disliked the bounty system, because it seemed to him 

 to help the landlord at the expense of his 'protege the 

 labourer. To reduce the costs of living, and thus improve 

 the lot of the wage-earner, was one of Smith's chief aims ; 

 and therefore the whole of his great work resounds with the 

 knell of the Corn Laws. The real cause for wonder is that 

 their repeal was delayed so long after his book appeared in 

 print. For all this he incurred the wrath of Anderson, who 

 parti}'- saw through and exposed the flimsy basis on which 

 these prejudices were founded. 



Later economists have learned how drastically the march 

 of events tests economical dogma. Who knows, if Smith 

 had lived long enough, that he might not have favoured 

 Protectionist principles ! Even Ricardo might have modified 

 his views had he survived the period when a vast increase in 

 the population coincided with a vast drop in the rental value 

 of land. It is more than probable that the advocates of the 

 agricultural theory would have entirely reversed their fiscal 

 policy had the^^ lived to see the days when, as an effect of 

 Free Trade, the chief sources of the nation's wealth were 

 derived from soil in the possession of foreign landlords. The 

 tendency of each successive school of economical thought 

 was to unduly exaggerate the importance of some particular 

 interest. Thus in Colbert's times the encouragement of com- 

 mercial enterprise became the end and aim of the statesman ; 

 in Quesnai's this was replaced by that of agriculture. Smith 

 apotheosised labour, and a little later the condition of the 

 pauper became the theme of the economical philosopher. 



As the century drew to its close, some splendid additions of 

 economic facts were contributed by Anderson and Young to 

 the theories already supplied by Hume, Stewart, and Smith. 

 Early in the present century Malthus wrote a history on the 

 growth of population, Eden one on the poor. 



II. K 



