568 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



apprehension of the scientific method proper to Sociology ; I cannot 

 but think that he has overlooked the extensive and important practical 

 guidance which 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 although 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 difficult, by tracing back the demonstrations, and intro- 

 ducing the new premisses in their proper places, to make the same 

 general course of argument which serve for the one case, serve for 

 the others too. 



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

 economists to discuss the natural laws of the distribution of the pro- 

 duce of industry, on a supposition which is scarcely realized anywhere 

 out of England and Scotland, namely, that the produce is "shared 

 among three classes, altogether distinct fiom one another, laborers, 

 capitalists, and landlords ; and that all these are free agents, permitted 

 in law and in fact to set upon their labor, 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 constituted, require to be 

 revised whenever they are applied to any other. They are inapplica- 

 ble where the only capitalists are the landlords, and the laborers are 

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

 the universal landlord is the state, as in India. They are inap])licable 

 where the agricultural laborer is generally the owner both of the land 

 itself and of the capital, as in France, or of the capital only, as in 

 Ireland." But although 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 particular 

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

 the value of the propositions, considered with reference to the state of 

 society fi-om which they were drawn. And even as applicable to other 

 states of society, " it must not be supposed that the science is so incom- 

 plete and unsatisfactory as this might seem to prove. Though many of 

 its conclusions are only locally true, its method of investigation is appli- 

 cable universally; and as he who has solved a certain number of alge- 

 braic equations, can without difficulty solve all others of the same kind, 

 so he who knows the political economy of England, or even of York- 

 shire, knows that of all nations, actual or possible, provided he have 

 good sense enough not to expect the same conclusion to issue from 

 varying premisses." Whoever is thoroughly master of the laws which, 

 under free competition, determine the rent, profits, and wages, received 

 by landlords, capitalists, and laborers in a state of society in which 

 the three classes are completely separate, 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 



