650 beport— 1878. 



and to the general material well-being of communities. And none of these things- 

 can he really understood without correct views of the structure and evolution of 

 society in all its aspects ; in other words, we are led back to the conclusion, that 

 they cannot he fruitfully treated apart from general sociology. I have not been 

 ahle to do more than indicate the leading features of a criticism which I recommend 

 all who are interested in the subject to pursue in its full development in Mr. Leslie's 

 admirable essay. 



There is a common economic abstraction, which, by the unsympathetic colour it 

 has given to political economy, has tended, perhaps more than anything else, to 

 repel the working classes from its study. By habitually regarding labour "from the 

 abstract point of view, and overlooking the personality of the labourer, economists 

 are led to leave out of account some of the considerations which most seriously 

 affect the condition of the working man. He comes to be regarded exclusively as 

 an agent — I might almost say, an instrument of production. It is too often for- 

 gotten that he is before all things a man and a member of society — that he is 

 usually the head of a household, and that the conditions of his life should be such 

 as to admit of his maintaining the due relations with his family — that he is also a 

 citizen, and requires for the intelligent appreciation of the social and political 

 system to which he belongs a certain amount of leisure and opportunity for mental 

 culture. Even when a higher education is now sought for him, it is often con- 

 ceived as exclusively designed to adapt him for the effective exercise of his functions 

 as a producer, and so is reduced to technical instruction ; whereas moral and social 

 ideas are for him, as for all of us, by far the most important, because most directly 

 related to conduct. Labour, again, is viewed as a commodity for sale, like any 

 other commodity ; though it is plain that, even if it could be properly so called at 

 all, yet in some particulars, as in the difficulty of local transfer (a family having to 

 be considered), and in the frequent impossibility of waiting for a market, it is quite 

 exceptional amongst commodities. By a further abstraction, the difference of the 

 social vocations of the sexes is made to disappear, in economic as in political rea- 

 soning, by means of the simple expedient of substituting for man in every proposi- 

 tion^e/-sow or human being; and so, by little else than a trick of phraseology, self-sup- 

 port is made as much an obligation of the woman as of the man. It is true that un- 

 generous sentiment has much to do with the prevalence of these modes of thought \ 

 but what it is most suitable to insist on here, is that the science on which they 

 rest, or in which they find justification, is false science. By merely keeping close 

 to facts and not hiding realities under lax generalizations, we shall be led to more 

 humane, as well as truer, conceptions of the proper conditions of industrial life. 



It is a characteristic feature of the metaphysical habit of mind (using that 

 phrase in the sense with which Comte has familiarized us) to mistake creations of 

 the speculative imagination for objective realities. Examples of this tendency 

 have not been wanting in the dominant system of political economy. The most 

 remarkable is perhaps furnished by the ' Theory of the Wages Fund.' The history 

 of that doctrine is instructive, but I cannot here enlarge upon it ; it may suffice to 

 say that though the so-called wages fund is simply a scientific figment, the only 

 legitimate use of which would be to facilitate the expression of certain relations, it 

 has been habitually regarded as an actual entity, possessing a determinate magni- 

 tude at any assigned instant. It is true that Mill gave up this theory, when Mr. 

 Thornton had convinced him of its unsubstantial nature ; but, strange to say, 

 even when relinquished by the master, some of the disciples continued to cling 

 to it. Professor Caimes in his latest work insisted that Mill was mistaken in 

 abandoning it, and it is still taught in some of the elementary manuals — not, I am 

 glad to observe, in that of Professor Jevons, who indeed never adopted it. There 

 are, in my opinion, other quite as illusory economic conceptions which have met 

 with & good deal of acceptance, and have even obtained the sanction of dis- 

 tinguished names. If I do not now enter on an examination of them, it is 

 because I am unwilling that the general views I am desirous of presenting should 

 be lost in a series of special discussions, for which a more suitable opportunity can 

 easily be found. 



III. The third prevailing error of the economists — and, with the exception of 



