TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 119 



labour for themselves alone, so nations must needs depend on otlier nations, and be 

 knit together by the strong bands of reciprocal benefit, if they would work out 

 their own highest good. Political Economy, as Adam Smith fully recognized, 

 does not discuss the prosperity of a single people, but proposes as its object the 

 discovery of the wealth of nations. It has been the privilege of the economist to 

 disprove the fallacy that one people's gain is another people's loss, a delusion which 

 was not too gross to possess the mind of Bacon, as it was the secret of the foreign 

 policy pursued by this country for many centuries, as it has been the chief cause 

 bj' which national rivalries and antipathies have been developed and sustained. 



In the next place, the spheres of the economist and the statesman are rapidly 

 becoming one. Domestic legislation is increasingly interpreted on economical 

 grounds, assailed because at variance with economical axioms, supported because 

 in accordance with economical demonstrations. A statesman would iu these daj'S 

 be at once bold and foolish who aflected to disdain economical consequences 

 or defy economical laws. Now at least we find all parties, the representatives of 

 all interests, appealing to the cougTuity of their policy with the truths of Political 

 Economy. The abolition of the excise duty on malt is argued from one set of 

 economical principles, its retention is vindicated on another. The regulation of 

 the currency is defended on groimds which involved, on the part of those who 

 uphold our existing system, the recognition of certain causes whose regidarity was 

 supposed to partake of the strictness of physical science ; while those who dispute 

 the wisdom of om* monetary laws disparage the universality of the cause, and 

 point to other principles which they assert the legislature has ignorantly violated. 

 But, in effect, every com-se of public policy, eveiy law or custom which deals 

 with or affects the material interests of the community, is in course of being re- 

 viewed by the light of economic science. The incidence of taxation, direct or 

 indirect; the tenure of land; the right of settling land; the relations of labour to 

 capital, with the artificial machinery employed to diminish or increase the share 

 which each of these contributories demands from the gross product ; the functions 

 of credit, and the power which it possesses over currency, or couAersely, the 

 influence of currency on credit ; the interference of government with labour, 

 particularly the labour of the young ; and a host of other public questions, are not 

 or cannot hereafter be treated from a sentimental or a politic point of view, but 

 must be discussed in their economical bearings, in their influence on the general 

 well-being of society. 



Again, the same influences are being brought to bear on the relations subsisting 

 between this and foreign Governments. The ancient habits and instincts of 

 political diplomacy are silently or uoisilj^ wearing out or passing away, and a new 

 diplomacy of commerce, assuming for a time the guise of formal treaties, is oc- 

 cupying no small part of the ground once assigned to labours which were called 

 into activity by distrust, and effected their pm-pose by intrigue. And if, indeed, 

 impolicy and injustice are legitimately open to remonstrance, and there be any 

 defence for interfering, either by advice or threats, with the affairs of foreign 

 nations, when their action is relative solely to those topics which once formed 

 the material for diplomatic correspondence ; such a course of procedure is just as 

 legitimate when a Government is wilfully crippling its own resources, and inflict- 

 ing wrongs upon the nation whose general interests it is bomid to maintain, by a 

 restrictive and minatory commercial policy. 



Among the various questions of great economical importance which have been 

 before the public during the past year, there are two on which, with your per- 

 mission, I will make a few brief comments. These are the contingency, at no 

 remote date, of a considerable exhaustion of certain mineral resources in this 

 country and the altered position which England might consequently assume, and 

 the present condition of what is familiarly called the money market. The first of 

 these questions raises a variety of issues, the magnitude of which cannot be over- 

 estimated ; the second is a crisis unparalleled for its severity and its duration. 



Attention has been called by an economist, who has exhibited great research 

 and original thought on a number of subjects, to the relations subsisting between 

 the consimiption of British coal and its future supply. Geologists, it appears, are 

 well-nigh agreed as to the extent of the deposits, and as to the depth within 



