Principles of Political Economy

by Arthur Latham Perry

But the Jews have had no special privileges in the realm of trade; on the contrary, they have always been under special disabilities both legal and social. Even in England, the most liberal country in Europe, they were exiled for long periods, maltreated at all points of contact with other people, more or less put under the ban of the Common and the Statute law, often outrageously taxed on their goods and persons, and studiously kept out of the paths of highest public employment even down to a time within the memory of living men.[1] Yet so natural is the impulse to trade, so universally diffused, so imperative also if progress is in any direction to be attained, that the English and all other peoples were as glad to borrow money, that is, buy the use of it, of the persecuted Jews, as the latter were to get money by buying and selling other things, and then to loan it, that is, sell the use of it, under the best securities (never very good) for its return with interest, that they could obtain. Happily, the mutual gains that always wait on the Exchanges even when their conditions are curtailed, of course attended the mutilated exchanges between Jews and Christians: otherwise, they would not continue to take place.

Christianity, however, as the perfected Judaism, gradually brought in the better conditions, the higher impulses, and the more certain rewards, of Trade, all which, we may be sure, were designed in the divine Plan of the world. What is called the Progress of Civilization has been marked and conditioned at every step by an extension of the opportunities, a greater facility in the use of the means, a more eager searching for proper expedients, and a higher certainty in the securing of the returns, of mutual exchanges among men. There have been indeed, and there still are, vast obstacles lying across the pathway of this Progress in the unawakened desires and reluctant industry and short-sighted selfishness of individuals, as well as in the ignorant prejudices and mistaken legislation of nations; but all the while Christianity has been indirectly tugging away at these obstacles, and Civilization has been able to rejoice over the partial or complete removal of some of them; while also Christianity directly works out in human character those chief qualities, on which the highest success of commercial intercourse among men will always depend, namely, Foresight, Diligence, Integrity, and mutual Trust; so that, what we call Civilization is to a large extent only the result of a better development of these human qualities in domestic and foreign commerce.

Contrary to a common conception in the premises, the sacred books of both Jews and Christians display no bias at all against buying and selling, but rather extol such action as praiseworthy, and also those qualities of mind and habits of life that lead up to it and tend too to increase its amount, and they constantly illustrate by means of language derived from traffic the higher truths and more spiritual life, which are the main object of these inspired writers. It is indeed true that the chosen people of God were forbidden to take Usury of each other, though they were permitted to take it freely of strangers, and that they were forbidden to buy horses and other products out of Egypt, for fear they would be religiously corrupted by such commercial intercourse with idolaters; but there is nothing of this sort in the law of Moses that cannot be easily explained from the grand purpose to found an agricultural commonwealth for religious ends, in which commonwealth no family could permanently alienate its land, and in which it was a great object to preserve the independence and equality of the tribes and families. Throughout the Old Testament there is no word or precept that implies that trade in itself is not helpful and wholesome; there were sharp and effective provisions for the recovery of debts; there were any number of exhortations to diligence in business, such as, "In the morning sow thy seed, and at evening withhold not thy hand"; King Solomon himself made a gigantic exchange in preparation for the temple with King Hiram of Tyre, by which the cedars of Lebanon were to be paid for by the grain and oil of the agricultural kingdom; chapter xxvii of the prophet Ezekiel is a graphic description of the commerce of the ancient world as it centered in the market of Tyre, a description carried out into detail both as to the nations that frequented that market and as to the products that were exchanged in it,—"silver, iron, tin, lead, persons of men, vessels of brass, horses, horsemen, mules, horns of ivory, ebony-wood, carbuncles, purple work, fine linen, corals, rubies, wheat, pastry, syrup, oil, balm, wine of Helbon, white wool, thread, wrought iron, cassia, sweet reed, cloth, lambs, rams, goats, precious spices, precious stones, splendid apparel, mantles of blue, embroidered work, chests of damask, and gold"; and chapter xxxi of Proverbs describes the model housewife in terms like these,—

"The heart of her husband trusteth in her,
And he is in no want of gain.
She seeketh wool and flax,
And worketh willingly with her hands.
She is like the merchants' ships;
She bringeth her food from afar.
She riseth while it is yet night,
And giveth food to her family,
And a task to her maidens.
She layeth a plan for a field and buyeth it;
With the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard.
She perceiveth how pleasant is her gain,
And her lamp is not extinguished in the night.
She putteth forth her hands to the distaff,
And her hands take hold of the spindle.
She maketh for herself coverlets;
Her clothing is of fine linen and purple.
She maketh linen garments and selleth them,
And delivereth girdles to the merchants."

Still more explicit and instructive are the words and spirit of the New Testament. There cannot be the least doubt that the whole influence of Christianity is favorable to the freest commercial exchanges at home and abroad, because these depend largely on mutual confidence between man and man, of which confidence Christianity is the greatest promoter. It may be conceded at once that our Lord "overthrew the tables of the money-changers and the seats of them that sold doves" within the sacred precincts of the temple, but this, not because it is wrong to change money or sell doves, but because that was not the place for such merchandising; so He himself explained his own action in the sequel; provincial worshippers coming up to Jerusalem must needs have their coins changed into the money of the Capital, and must needs buy somewhere the animal victims for sacrifice; but the whip of small cords had significance only as to the place, and not at all as to the propriety, of such trading.

One of our Lord's parables, the parable of the Talents, sets forth in several striking lights the privilege and duty and reward of diligent trading. "Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents." And when this servant came to the reckoning, and brought as the result of his free and busy traffic "five talents more," the prompt and hearty approval of his lord—"well done, thou good and faithful servant"—becomes the testimony of the New Testament to the merit and the profit and the benefit of a vigorous buying and selling. For this servant could not have been authoritatively pronounced good and faithful if the results of his action commended had been in any way prejudicial to others. The truth is, as we shall abundantly see by and by with the reasons of it, that any man who buys and sells under the free and natural conditions of trade, benefits the man he trades with just as much as he benefits himself. But the parable has a still stronger word in favor of exchanges. There was another servant also entrusted with capital by his lord at the same time, when the latter was about to travel "into a far country." We are expressly told that distribution was made "to every man according to his several ability," and thus this servant was only entrusted with a single talent, the size of the capital given to him being in just proportion to the size of the man,—the smallest share falling of course to the smallest man. But he had the same opportunity as the two others. The world was open to him. Capital was in demand, if not in those parts then in some other, to which, like his lord, he might straightway take his journey. But when his time of reckoning came, and he had nothing to show for the use of his capital, he upbraided his lord as a hard man for expecting any increase, and brought out his bare talent wrapped in a napkin, saying, "I was afraid, and I went and hid thy talent in the earth." His wise lord at once denounced this servant as "wicked and slothful," insisted that his money ought to have been "put to the exchangers," and said finally in a just anger "cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness."

It is moreover in incidental passages of the Scriptures, in which the methods of business are commended to the searchers after higher things, that we see their high estimate of those methods and gains. "Buy the truth, and sell it not; buy wisdom and understanding" (Prov. xxiii, 23). "Buying up for yourselves opportunities" (Col. iv, 5). "I counsel thee to buy of me gold refined by fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white garments, that thou mayest be clothed; and eye-salve to anoint thine eyes, that thou mayest see" (Rev. iii, 18). "But rather let him labor, working with his hands at that which is good, that he may have to give to him that is in need" (Eph. iv, 28). "But if any one provideth not for his own, and especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever" (1 Tim. v, 8).

Now, the universal test and proof of any truth is its harmony with some other truths. Does an alleged truth fall in with and fill out well some other demonstrated and accepted proposition, or a number of such other propositions? If so, then that truth is proved. Human reason can no further go. The mind rests with relish and content in a new acquisition. To apply this to the case in hand,—if men were designed of their Maker to buy and sell to their own mutual benefit and advancement, if mankind have always been buying and selling as towards that end and with that obvious result, and if the Future promises to increase and reduplicate the buying and selling of the Present in every direction without end, and all in the interest of a broad civilization and a true and lasting progress; and if, in harmony with these truths, the written revelation of God in every part of it assumes that buying and selling in its inmost substance and essential forms be good and righteous and progressive, and suitable in all its ends and methods to illustrate and enforce ends and methods in the higher kingdom of spiritual and eternal Life;—then these coördinate truths will logically and certainly follow, (1) that Trade is natural and essential and beneficial to mankind; (2) that it constitutes in an important sense a realm of human thought and action by itself, separate from the neighboring realm of Giving, and equally from the hostile realm of Stealing; and (3) that a careful analysis of what buying and selling in its own peculiar nature is, a thorough ascertainment and a consequent clear statement of its fundamental laws, and a faithful exposure of what in individual selfishness and in subtle or open Legislation makes against these laws, must be of large consequence to the welfare of mankind.

Accordingly, let us now attempt such Analysis and Ascertainment and Exposure. This is precisely the task that lies before us in this book—just this, and nothing more. The term, "Political Economy," has long been and is still an elastic title over the zealous work of many men in many lands; but in the hands of the present writer during a life now no longer short, the term has always had a definite meaning, the work has covered an easily circumscribed field, and so the present undertaking concerns only Buying and Selling and what is essentially involved in that. This gives scope and verge enough for the studies of a life-time. This has the advantage of a complete sphere of its own. Terms may thus be made as definite as the nature of language will ever allow; definitions will thus cover things of one kind only; and generalizations, although they may be delicate and difficult, will deal with no incongruous and obstinate material.

1. The grandfather of the writer, an illiterate but long-headed farmer, was able to give good points to his three college-bred sons, by insisting that they look "into the natur on't." What, then, are the ultimate elements of Buying and Selling? What are the invariable conditions that precede, accompany, and follow, any and every act of Trade? Of course we are investigating now and throughout this treatise the deliberative acts of reasonably intelligent human beings, in one great department of their common foresight and rational action. We have consequently nothing to do here with Fraud or Theft or Mania or Gift. Acts put forth under the impulse of these are direct opposites of, or at best antagonistic to, acts of Trade. They tend to kill trade, and therefore they are no part of trade. These, then, and such as these, aside, we will now analyze a single Act of Exchange at one time and place,—which will serve in substance for all acts of exchange in all times and places, and just find out for ourselves what are the Fundamentals and Essentials of that matter, with which alone we have to do in this science of Political Economy.