160 ~ -REPoRT—1862. 
The second was, that it was the science of exchanges, or of value, or the philosophy 
of commerce. This definition was first given to it by Condillac, who published a 
treatise on economic science in 1776, the same year as that in which the ‘ Wealth 
of Nations’ was published. This was neglected at first; but, as in so many 
other cases in science, Condillac’s idea was now rapidly gaining ground, and it 
was the one to which the majority of recent economists were now gravitating. 
The object of the paper was to consider which was the better definition. The first 
requisite of a good definition was that it should be clear and distinct. In the first 
detinition, ——— distribution, consumption, and wealth were wholly unex- 
plained. Scarcely two economists were agreed as to what wealth meant, or were 
consistent with themselves in its use. All were.agreed, however, that corn, clothes, 
&c.,-were wealth. The production of corn, clothes, &c., was the production of 
wealth. If, therefore, political economy treated of the production of wealth, it 
might be supposed that it treated of the business of farming, manufacturing, &c. 
But every one knew that economic science had nothing to do with the arts and 
processes of farming, manufacturing, &c.; it had nothing to do with the arts and 
processes by which things were obtained, but only with their price or value when 
obtained. Production must, therefore, bear some very technical meaning not 
apparent at first, and therefore it should not be made part of the definition of the 
science. Every lawyer and merchant knew that a debt was a species of property. 
The business of banking consisted in buying debts by creating other debts. It was 
by no means easy to see how buying debts with debts came under the idea of the 
production, distribution, and consumption of wealth. 
The interpretation of wealth was full of perplexity. No man could tell what 
Adam Smith meant by wealth. But as economic science treated of wealth, we 
must consider what that quality of things is in regard to which they are considered 
as wealth, and how they came into the science of wealth; and that quality being 
settled with regard to any one of them, it must be generalized so as to include all 
quantities which possessed that quality. The Abbé Baudeau had a very instruc- 
tive passage, in which he showed that things were wealth solely from being ex- 
changeable ; so long as they were exchangeable, they were wealth; when they 
ceased to be exchangeable, they ceased to be wealth. Here, therefore, was the 
general conception of wealth—exchangeability. Hence, if political economy 
was the science of wealth, it must be the science of the exchangeable relations 
of quantities. This was now the conception adopted by the majority of modern 
economists; and we at once saw that it answered the conditions of a physical 
science, It was a distinct and circumscribed body of phenomena, all based 
upon a single idea. It was a new order of variable quantities, and of course the 
theory of the exchangeable relations of quantities must be brought into harmony 
with the general theory of variable quantities. Adopting exchangeability as the 
test of wealth, all exchangeable quantities must be included in it. These were of 
three distinct species :—(1) material products, (2) what were usually called imma- 
terial products, such as the sciences and knowledge, and (8) what was called in- 
corporeal property, such as copyright, shares in companies, the funds, credit, &e, 
Exchanges of these kinds of property were constantly taking place, and therefore 
that formed the domain of economic science. The nature of the science was indi- 
cated by its name, for oikos was the technical term in Attic law for private property 
of all sorts; and economic science determined the laws which regulated the ex- 
changes of property. The foundation of economic science was the right of private 
property and exchange, which was opposed to Socialism, where the right of private 
property and exchange was abolished. Such a state extinguished all notion of 
value, which could not exist without an exchange. Production and distribution 
together constitute exchange. When persons want to have something distributed 
to them, they must produce something to give in exchange, and the reciprocal 
roduction and distribution form an exchange. The whole body of exchanges, 
fut within the country and with foreign countries, constitute what the majority 
of modern economists hold to be the domain of pure economic science, 
This body of phenomena might be brought under the strictest laws of physical 
science, and all discordances among economists might be decided by the acknow- 
edged laws of inductive logic. It could easily be shown that the modes of investi- 
Weis 
