The report on the “International Monetary Conference of 1878” contains a vast quantity of material on monetary questions.
The British parliamentary documents contain several annual “Statistical Abstracts” of the greatest value, of which the one relating to other European states is peculiarly convenient and useful. These can always be purchased at given prices.
A. R. Spofford's “American Almanac” is an annual of great usefulness.
Preliminary Remarks.
Writers on Political Economy profess to teach, or to investigate, the nature of Wealth, and the laws of its production and distribution; including, directly or remotely, the operation of all the causes by which the condition of mankind, or of any society of human beings, in respect to this universal object of human desire, is made prosperous or the reverse.
It will be noticed that political economy does not include ethics, legislation, or the science of government. The results of political economy are offered to the statesman, who reaches a conclusion after weighing them in connection with moral and political considerations. Political Economy is distinct from Sociology; although it is common to include in the former everything which concerns social life. Some writers distinguish between the pure, or abstract science, and the applied art, and we can speak of a science of political economy only in the sense of a body of abstract laws or formulas. This, however, does not make political economy less practical than physics, for, after a principle is ascertained, its operation is to be observed in the same way that we study the force of gravitation in a falling stone, even when retarded by opposing forces. An economic force, or tendency, can be likewise distinctly observed, although other influences, working at the same time, prevent the expected effect from following its cause. It is, in short, the aim of political economy to investigate the laws which govern the phenomena of material wealth. (Cf. Cossa, “Guide,” chap. iii.)
While the [Mercantile] system prevailed, it was assumed, either expressly or tacitly, in the whole policy of nations, [pg 048] that wealth consisted solely of money; or of the precious metals, which, when not already in the state of money, are capable of being directly converted into it. According to the doctrines then prevalent, whatever tended to heap up money or bullion in a country added to its wealth.
More correctly the Mercantilists (in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) held that where money was most plentiful, there would be found the greatest abundance of the necessaries of life.[100]