€52 beport— 1878. 



for example, the true meaning of the trade societies of modern times, so important an 

 object of economic study, " we must," he says, " go back to the older periods when 

 analogous causes produced analogous results." And facts of this order, he adds, 

 " must be studied not merely in their own successive forms, but in relation to the 

 other phenomena of their time — the political institutions, the class distinctions, the 

 family arrangements, the modes of distribution and degree of intercourse between 

 localities, the amounts of knowledge, the religious beliefs, the morals, the senti- 

 ments, the customs." These considerations all point to the historical method, and, 

 I may add, they all confirm what I have already urged, that the economic pheno- 

 mena of society cannot be isolated from its other aspects. "When our object is not 

 the explanation of any past or present fact, but the prevision (within possible limits) 

 of the future, and the adoption of a policy in relation to that future, our guide mu9t 

 still be the historic method, conceived as indicating, from the comparison of succes- 

 sive states, the general tendency of society with respect to the phenomenon consi- 

 dered, and the agencies which are in course of modifying existing systems. 

 " Legislative action of no kind," again says Mr. Spencer, " can be taken that is 

 not either in agreement with or at variance with the processes of national growth 

 and development as naturally going on." We can by judicious action modify in their 

 special mode of accomplishment or in the rate of their development, but cannot alter 

 in their fundamental nature, the changes which result from the spontaneous tenden- 

 cies of humanity. An attempt to introduce any social factor which is not essen- 

 tially conformable to the contemporary civilization, will result, if not in serious 

 disturbance, at least in a mere waste of effort. Any proposal of social action, there- 

 fore, should repose on a previous analysis of those spontaneous tendencies, and this 

 is possible only by the historic method. Let me give an example from an economic 

 subject which happens just at present to offer a special interest. Attention has 

 been called by Sir Henry Maine to the general law that property in land originally 

 belongs, not to individuals, nor even to families in the modern sense, but to larger 

 societies, and that in the progress of mankind there is a natural movement from 

 common to separate ownership. This historical result has been elaborated by a 

 number of independent inquirers ; and M. de Laveleye in a work of great research 

 has brought together a vast mass of evidence, both establishing the main fact, and 

 exhibiting the varied features which the common evolution has assumed in different 

 countries. There is much that is attractive in particular sides of this early organi- 

 zation of territorial property, and M. de Laveleye has yielded to the charm, so far 

 as to regret its disappearance in the developed communities of the West, though he 

 stops short of recommending what others have suggested — namely, a return to 

 the primitive constitution, by replacing the commune in the possession of the soil. 

 Indeed, he himself, by establishing the progressive spontaneous tendency of society 

 towards individual property, shows such a project to be a dream, and banishes it 

 from the field of practical economic policy. From the general appearance of this 

 collective ownership in an early stage of society, it is sometimes argued that it is 

 a natural system ; but the historic method shows that it is just as natural that it 

 should disappear at a more advanced stage. Serving useful ends in the former 

 period, it becomes in the latter an obstruction to progress by stereotyping agricul- 

 tural art, and impeding that individual initiative which is an indispensable condition 

 of social improvement. The safe prediction is that the Swiss Allmend, the Russian 

 Mir, and other forms of collective ownership will disappear, and that personal ap- 

 propriation will become the universal rule. The social destination of property in 

 land, as of every species of wealth, will be increasingly acknowledged and realized 

 in the future ; but that residt will be brought about,, not through legal institutions, 

 but by the establishment and diffusion of moral convictions. 



There have been great differences of opinion as to the method of economic in- 

 quiry pursued by Adam Smith. Mr. Lowe insists that his method was de- 

 ductive — that he had the unique merit of baring raised the study of a branch of 

 human transactions to the dignity of a deductive science. At the same celebration 

 at which this opinion was put forward, Professor Thorold Rogers expressed his 

 surprise that anyone should entertain such a view. It seemed to him clear that 

 Adam Smith was pre-eminently an inductive philosopher. Mr. Rogers has edited 



