[740] Say had already recognised the claims of immaterial wealth alongside of material, and he had employed the term “services” in describing them. In this way he considered that the professor, the doctor and the actor had claims to be regarded as producers. Dunoyer, while accepting his conclusion, criticises his way of putting it. He recognises no distinction between material and immaterial wealth. There is nothing but utility. “It is true that taste, education, etc., are immaterial, but so is everything that man produces.” But he is entirely wrong when he says that a good teacher is a producer of enlightened men and a doctor a producer of healthy persons. We are at a loss to explain why at one moment he refuses to recognise the material element in production, while at another he grossly exaggerates the material results of purely intellectual labour.
[741] “Labour and exchange belong to two categories of facts which are absolutely distinct in their nature. Labour implies production. Commerce and exchange imply nothing of the kind.” (De la Liberté du Travail, p. 599.)
[742] Seligman in the Economic Journal for 1903, pp. 335-511, devotes two very interesting articles to such writers under the title of Some Neglected British Economists. One is astonished to find how many there are and the originality which they show, and to learn that several of the more important modern theories are simply rediscoveries.
[743] Mrs. Marcet’s Conversations belong to 1817, Miss Martineau’s Illustrations to 1832. The latter had a wonderful vogue.
[744] Quoted by Seager in a lecture on economics at Columbia University in 1908.
[745] We have already referred to McCulloch and James Mill, two of Ricardo’s immediate disciples. We must just add the names of Torrens and Gibbon Wakefield. Wakefield was the author of a book which had a great reputation at one time, but which was simply an attempt to apply the Ricardian principles to the practice of colonisation.
[746] Nassau Senior during a part of his life was Professor of Political Economy at Oxford. The Oxford chair, created in 1825, was the first chair of economics to be established in England. His writings, which treat of various subjects, belong to the period 1827-52. The bulk of his doctrine is contained in his Political Economy, contributed to the Encyclopædia Britannica in 1836 and afterwards published separately. This small volume may be regarded as the earliest manual of political economy.
[747] The four principles were: (i) the Hedonistic Principle; (ii) the Principle of Population; (iii) the Law of Increasing Returns in Industry; (iv) the Law of Diminishing Returns in Agriculture.
[748] “But a considerable part of the produce of every country is the recompense of no sacrifice whatever; is received by those who neither labour nor put by, but merely hold out their hands to accept the offerings of the rest of the community.” (Political Economy, p. 89.) He takes the income of a successful doctor as an illustration, and divides it up as follows (ibid., p. 189):
| Wages or payment for labour | £40 |
| Profit or payment for abstinence | £960 |
| Rent | £3000 |