Apbil 23, 1886.] 



SCIENCE. 



379 



the hand system at the beginning of the eighteenth 

 century, was now itself supplanted by the factory 

 system. The conditions of English life were fast 

 outgrowing the swaddling-clothes of official 

 omniscience and governmental sciolism. In the 

 town where Smith labored there were numerous 

 protests, by individuals and by societies, against 

 the antiquated policy of the government. It is 

 not surprising, then, that, after a careful resume 

 of the shortcomings of the mercantilists' com- 

 mercial policy and of the physiocrats' agricultural 

 policy, Smith should have concluded with the 

 celebrated passage, "All systems, either of 

 preference or restraint, therefore, being thus com- 

 pletely taken away, the obvious and simple system 

 of natural liberty establishes itself of its own ac- 

 cord. Every man, as long as he does not violate 

 the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue 

 his own interest in his own way, and to bring 

 both his industry and his capital into competition 

 with those of any other man or order of men." 



And yet Smith was too broad-minded to hold 

 this doctrine without any qualifications, for he 

 possessed a far truer historical spirit than many 

 of his successors. He upholds the navigation law 

 Of Cromwell as a measure of the wisest statesman- 

 ship ; he defends the necessity of export duties in 

 certain cases : he confesses that the interests of 

 individuals "in any particular branch of trade or 

 manufacture are always in some respects different 

 from, and even opposite to, the interest of the 

 public." It cannot be denied that Adam Smith's 

 philosophy was to a great extent correct : his 

 doctrines most clearly showed the impolicy of the 

 combination laws, of the acts of settlement, of 

 the statutes which fixed the rates of prices and 

 wages. Smith's whole work consisted in pulling 

 down the rotten fences which obstructed the path 

 of the artisan, the farmer, and the merchant, and 

 we of to-day cannot be too grateful for the salu- 

 tary impulse he thus gave to all economics. But 

 what was then good, is not necessarily good to- 

 day. We must not make Smith responsible for 

 the faults of his disciples. The 'Wealth of na- 

 tions ' was written at a time when there was need 

 of such a reaction as it undertook to initiate. 

 Before building the new, it is imperative to tear 

 down the old, and Smith certainly succeeded 

 beyond his anticipations in demolishing the old 

 principles. But since his time new conditions 

 have arisen. The factory system, then in its in- 

 fancy, has revolutionized industrial life, and has 

 brought in its train problems which scarcely ex- 

 isted in 1776. The machinery of commerce and 

 transportation is vastly more complex, and cannot 

 be regulated by any such simple methods of 

 laissez-faire as were possible when Smith wrote. 



It is, of course, not fair to take him to task for 

 failure to perceive the consequences of his doc- 

 trines when applied under different conditions ; 

 but it is legitimate to protest against the accept- 

 ance, at the present time, of his views, in so far 

 as they are one-sided and inadequate. Smith's 

 work is by far the most important ever written 

 in the science ; but we must not, on that account, 

 bow down blindly before its author, and meekly 

 accept all his conclusions. Had we lived in 1776, 

 we would certainly have been followers of Smith : 

 did Smith live in 1886, he would no less surely 

 have been in the vanguard of the new school. 



6. On the lines thus marked out by the great 

 Scotchman, Malthus and Ricardo continued the 

 work. The one clarified all ideas on the subject 

 of population, and threw light on some doctrines 

 left obscure by Smith : the other sought to eluci- 

 date the complex problem of values, applying his 

 peculiar theories to the law of rent, — of which 

 he was the f ormulator, not the originator, — and 

 being moderately successful in his treatment of 

 currency problems. The outcries of late raised 

 against the personal character of these two emi- 

 nent economists are utterly groundless. Mackin- 

 tosh expressly tells us, "I have known Adam 

 Smith slightly, Ricardo well, Malthus intimately. 

 Is it not something to say for a science, that its 

 three great masters were about the three best men 

 I ever knew ? " And yet the exclusive predomi- 

 nance of abstract methods brought the two great 

 followers of Smith to many faulty conclusions. 

 In the case of Malthus, we have, as a result of 

 his justifiable indignation against the poor-laws 

 and the fantastic dreams of a Godwin, this 

 curious spectacle. A benevolent clergyman, full 

 of compassion and sympathy for the poor, feels 

 himself impelled to declare that no possible efforts 

 of government, no possible social movements or 

 spontaneous plans to better their condition, can 

 be of any avail. To the state he says, 'Hands 

 off ; ' to the philanthropists, economists, and states- 

 men he cries, ' All you can do is ineffectual ; ' to 

 the workmen themselves he declares, "Refrain 

 from combination, the sole method of bettering 

 your condition is to practise self-restraint." And 

 in this remedy he himself puts little faith. The 

 main causes of the distress he declares to be " to 

 a great extent, and for a certain time, irre- 

 mediable." And all this because of his firm 

 belief in the natural laws, the immutable prin- 

 ciples of an abstract political economy. Truly 

 a sad spectacle, which would be absurd if it were 

 not so sorrowful ! It might be termed a philoso- 

 phy of despair, a sad starting-point for nineteenth 

 century economics. Fortunately modern investi- 

 gation and recent events have proved the ground- 



