824 REPORT—1899. 
tions constantly forced upon us by the different experiences and habits of foreign 
countries. And we are happy in a neighbour like France, with her literary and 
social charms and graces, her scientific lucidity and inventiveness, and the contrasts 
of her social genius to inspire comparisons, and in many respects to set us examples. 
I have singled out one of her many writers for attention, precisely because of this 
quality of suggestiveness. Other investigators have, of course, attacked the sub- 
ject. In Belgium and Switzerland, Germany, Italy and Austria, and the United 
States, governments and individuals have recently undertaken the preparation of 
family budgets; but in many respects Le Play’s monographs are the first and 
greatest of all. They yield excellent material, upon which Science, in its various 
branches, has yet to do work which will benefit mankind in general ; and promises 
especially to benefit the people of this country. The cosmopolitan attitude of 
the older economists was largely due to their centring their attention upon 
the problems of exchange. To them the globe was peopled by men like our- 
selves, producing the fruits of the earth, anxious to exchange them to the greatest 
mutual advantage, but hindered from doing so by the perversity of national 
governments, The facts of consumption, at any rate, are local. They are often 
determined by geology, geography, climate, and occupation; and, however fully 
we may admit the economic solidarity of the world, and the advantage which 
one part of it derives from the prosperity of another, yet we may be easily forgiven 
for thinking that our first duty lies to our own brethren; that our natural 
work is that which lies at our own doors; that, as the old proverb says, ‘ the skin is 
nearer than the shirt.’ And we may fairly be excused if we attempt to make our 
contribution to the welfare of the human family through the improvement of the 
consumption of wealth and the cundition of the people in our own land. 
The following Papers were read :— 
1. The Mercantile System of Laisser Faire. By Erne. R. Faranay, M.A. 
The English Jaisser faire school, originally founded on a cosmopolitan theory 
of economics, occupies at present a position as purely nationalist as that of the 
mercantile school which it succeeded. This is the effect of a dogmatic insistence 
on the economic ideal as stated by Cobden, and a resulting indifference towards 
five recent developments of economic thought: the separation of the science from 
the art of economics, the detinition of the science and of its subject wealth, the 
humanist philosophy, the imperial idea, and the theory of relativity. The early 
free-traders, sharing the confusion prevalent fifty years ago between the economic 
science and art, exaggerated the functions of liberty in both, and were led in 
consequence to an uncritical identification of individual and cosmopolitan with 
national interests, They inherited Adam Smith’s inclination to confine the idea 
of wealth to material goods; and by over-estimating, not the importance of mate- 
rial interests, but their influence, exposed themselves to the charge of materialism 
and selfishness, both individual and national. Cobden himself was not a mate- 
rialist, and never lost sight of the human element in economics; but his followers 
have neglected this aspect of his teaching, and have laid a disproportionate stress 
on those points which circumstances had already obliged him to assert with 
exceptional force. They have moreover imitated his undiscriminating dislike for 
imperialism, and, while constantly sacrificing cosmopolitan theory to nationalist 
practice, have ignored the possibilities of the empire as an economic unit satisfying 
both nationalist and cosmopolitan ideals. The Jaisser faire school have never 
advanced beyond the mercantile theory of colonies, and their policy if unchecked 
would have led, as that of their predecessors did, to disintegration. Their neglect 
of the imperial idea, as illustrated by their recent insensibility to the injuries 
inflicted, by a policy of non-interference, on India and the West Indies, may be 
further explained by their refusal to admit the principle of relativity into the 
application of economic laws. But the safety and utility of economic, as of other 
truths, depend on the acknowledgment of their relativity, 
