-80 W. CUNNINGHAM, ARCHDEACON OF ELY, ON 



the one system in one part of the world can give us much 

 confidence as to the wisdom of attempting under similar 

 guidance to reconstruct society everywhere. 



These deep-seated resemblances are obscured by the fact that 

 Free Traders continue to advocate the doctrine of laissez faire 

 in regard to foreign commerce, even when they abandon it in 

 regard to everything else. This maxim, which was adopted by 

 Adam Smith and many of his followers as a counsel as to the 

 best means of attaining opulence, has never been accepted 

 by economists generally, and has been generally discarded in 

 ■Germany and America, through the influence of List. The 

 extent and manner in which the State can wisely interfere in 

 industrial and commercial life is not to be settled by any 

 formula ; it varies with the habits and conditions of each 

 -community. The study and co-ordination of actual experience 

 in many lands and many ages is necessary to enable us to take 

 up wisely the task which is enjoined on us by a sense of duty 

 to maintain the heritage of well-ordered political life we have 

 received, and by the desire to plant it in other lands. We are 

 learning to think imperially, and to take the Empire, not the 

 island of Great Britain, as the' unit to be considered ;* and 

 •economics as an empirical science gives us the means of 

 learning from experience as to the best means of developing 

 every part of the Empire, and of encouraging each part to 

 co-operate for the good of the whole. This was the admirable 

 scheme which was thought out by Mr. Wakefield ; and with 

 our longer experience and larger knowledge we ought to be 

 able to do much to relieve the congestion and unemploy- 

 ment at home, and at the same time to develop the more 

 backward areas of the British Empire. Imperialists and 

 Socialists are at one in rejecting the doctrine of laissez faire, but 

 Imperialists desire to rely on the experience of the past to 

 promote a clearly understood aim, while Socialism is necessarily 

 a leap in the dark ; so far as its constructive side goes it can 

 adduce little support from the organised study of experience. 



Y. 



The attraction of Socialism lies noL in the reasoning which 

 supports it, but in the hope it holds out and the sense of duty it 

 inspires. It is the form which the enthusiasm for humanity 



* Compare my " Plea for the Study o Economic History " in Economic 

 .Review^ ix (January, 1899), 



