Now, Professor Hodgson's statement, as reported in your columns, was that "demand regulates supply." If his assertion, in his lecture, was the qualified one, or that "wise demand regulates beneficial supply," your reporter is much to be blamed, the Professor's class profoundly to be congratulated, and this correspondence is at an end; while I look forward with deepest interest to the necessary elucidations by the Professor of the nature of wisdom and benefit; neither of these ideas having been yet familiar ones in common economical treatises. But I wrote under the impression that the Professor dealt hitherto, as it has been the boast of economists to deal, with things existent, and not theoretical (and assuredly the practical men of this country expect their children to be instructed by him in the laws which govern existing things); and it is therefore only in the name of your practical readers that I challenged him, and to-day repeat my challenge, in terms from which I trust he will not again attempt to escape by circumambient criticism of my works,[41] to define, in scientific terms, the limits under which his general statement that "supply regulates demand" is to be understood. That is to say, whether he, as Professor of Political Economy, is about to explain the relations (A) of rational and satiable demand with beneficial and benevolently-directly supply; or (B) of irrational and insatiable demand with mischievous and malevolently-directed supply; or (C) of a demand of which he cannot explain the character with a supply of which he cannot predict the consequence?
I am, etc.,
J. Ruskin.
FOOTNOTES:
[40] "I hereby promise Mr. Ruskin that ere very many months are over he shall have in print a sifting examination of his economic teaching." I do not find, however, that Professor Hodgson fulfilled his promise.
[41] Professor Hodgson's letter had quoted, with criticism, several passages from "Fors Clavigera," "Munera Pulveris," and "Time and Tide."
[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," April 18, 1865.]
STRIKES v. ARBITRATION.
To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."