The contention that Economics is not subject to natural law may be fairly regarded as a lineal descendant of the social doctrine that there are no natural rights in human relationships, but that human rights are only conventional. This is the lawless and vicious doctrine upon which slavery and every other form of social larceny have rested, from that form which held the Forty Thieves together, to that modern policy of “get what you can and keep what you get.”
Economists who can offer any other effective process for satisfying Economic desires than by the production of Artificial Objects from and upon Natural Resources and in accordance with natural laws, Economic as well as physical, would thereby kill every inference that may be correctly drawn from any contention in these pages. But until that miracle has been performed it behooves all advanced students of Economics to think, and to think clearly, without active prejudice or indolent confusion, upon the natural phenomena of the Economic realm. Give to those phenomena whatever name you please—my name for them is “natural law”—the fact nevertheless remains, a Basic Fact in Economics, that no Man nor any number of Men can produce Artificial Objects to or from any stage of the productive process except from and upon Natural Resources.
Natural law in Economics is not comparable with “common law” in the sense of a coordination and sanctioning of social customs. Nor is it “business law” in the sense of a clutter of commercial customs. And of course it is not “statutory law” in the sense of commands from political authorities to obedient citizens. In Economic science, as in every other science or art worthy the name, natural law uniformly and inexorably governs the relationship of cause and effect.
Browning struck a key-note when in his “Abt Vogler” he wrote of the “manifold music” evolved by bidding the organ obey, that—
... “effect proceeds from cause,
Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told;
It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws.”
If any Economic experiment “works” (as a pragmatist might say of it), why does it work? What other explanation can there be than that it “works” because it is a correct adaptation of cause to effect in obedience to mandates of natural Economic law.
Consumption of food is a natural effect of the natural necessity for food—a natural law. Production of food is a natural effect of the natural need of food for consumption—a natural law. Resort to Natural Resources as the sole source and foundation from and upon which to produce food is a natural effect caused by the natural need for food—a natural law.
Nor can natural law be limited to the individual man any more than it is to trees. Associated man also is governed by it. It is the latter relation that distinguishes it as Economic. From the natural desire of individual man for production from and upon Natural Resources, social Trade develops, not arbitrarily but as a natural consequence of a related natural cause. Let thoughtless students and professors of Economics who deny natural Economic law—the normal conditions of cause and effect that govern cooperative mankind in making a living—explain Economic phenomena, if they can, without reference to Economic cause and effect, or Economic cause and effect with natural Economic law left out.