Four Introductory Lectures on Political Economy

by Nassau William Senior

The inquiry which Quesnay originated was pursued, and with still greater success, by Adam Smith. Smith was superior to Quesnay, and perhaps to every writer since the times of Aristotle, in the extent and accuracy of his knowledge. He was, on the whole, as original a thinker as Quesnay, without being equally subject to the common defect of original thinkers, a tendency to push his favourite theories to extremes; and in the far greater freedom then allowed to industry in Great Britain than in France, and in the greater publicity with us of the government receipt and expenditure, he possessed far greater advantages as an observer. With these high qualifications and favourable opportunities, and assisted by a style unequalled in its attractiveness, he has almost completely superseded the labours of his predecessors. The few who read their writings, read them not in the hope of obtaining the instruction which they were intended to afford, but as sources of historical information, or as examples of the errors to which powerful minds may be subject in the infancy of a study.

From the appearance of the “Wealth of Nations,” Political Economy has excited a constantly increasing interest. All the events, fortunate and unfortunate, which have occurred in Europe during that extraordinary period, have tended both to increase its actual importance, and to occasion that importance to be better estimated. The art to which it is principally applicable is the great art of government, and particularly that branch of government which consists in the raising and employment of public money. Not a tax can be imposed or applied without materially affecting the fortunes of those by whom it is paid, of those among whom it is expended, and of third persons, many of whom, perhaps, are unaware of its existence. To ascertain the character and the extent of these effects, even as to any existing tax, without the aid of the general principles supplied by Political Economy, is scarcely practicable: to foretell or even to conjecture, with probability, the effects of an untried tax, without such aid, is impossible. A government ignorant of the nature of wealth, or of the laws which regulate its production and distribution, resembles a surgeon who has not studied anatomy, or a judge unacquainted with law.

But, under the old system of Continental Europe, many things concurred to diminish the attention which the evil consequences of this ignorance might have been expected to attract. Each monarchy was considered the patrimony of its king, and its public revenue a portion of his income. All that he could get he spent or gave away; part of it went in wars for his honour, part was wasted in building and pageantry, and part was distributed among his courtiers. Public debts were few and small, and were the debts, not of the nation, but of the crown. The interest was not an additional burden on the people, but a deduction from the gratifications of the prince, and was reduced from time to time, either by depreciating the currency, or by the simple expedient of a refusal to pay. No right was recognised in the public to inquire into the amount of the royal revenue, the sources from which it was derived, or the purposes to which it was applied. These were the private affairs of the sovereign, which it was not decent or even safe to canvass.

All this was changed at once by the French Revolution. It was proclaimed in France, and admitted, or scarcely denied, on the rest of the Continent, that governments are made for nations, not nations for governments; and that the public revenue is the revenue, not of the government, but of the nation,—not a property, but a trust,—not a rent or a tribute, but the purchase-money of the labour necessary to prevent foreign and domestic violence and fraud, paid over to the government merely as an administrator, unlawfully employed if applied to any other purpose, and unlawfully demanded if more than necessary for that purpose.

Every man felt himself interested that the proportion of his income which he had to pay over to the state should be reduced, either by diminishing expenditure, or by varying the mode of assessment.

At the same time the wars in which Europe was involved for a quarter of a century, and the scale on which they were carried on, occasioned in almost every country an enormous increase of that proportion of the whole income of the people which is administered by the government. Almost every country created a national debt, and thus threw on its rulers the additional duty of collecting a revenue, to be applied, not for current expenses, but to repay those who had advanced the public expenditure of previous years. And not only were the people induced to interest themselves in public affairs, they were frequently called upon to act. In many countries the whole form of government was more than once demolished and reconstructed. Almost every nation, at some period, received, or was promised, representative institutions; everywhere the monarch, by appealing to the people, recognised the existence and the force of a national will.

In the British Islands self-government was no novelty, but many circumstances concurred to increase and diffuse the interest taken in public affairs. Among these circumstances the principal ones were the extension of the public expenditure, the alterations in the currency, and the effects of the poor laws. In no extensive empire recorded in history, has so large a portion of the annual produce of the land, labour, and capital of the people, been administered by the state. Every man felt himself to be a public debtor, and almost every man became, in some shape or other, a public creditor. At the same time the nominal value of money, the standard by which his claims and liabilities were measured, was subject to variations considerable in themselves, grossly exaggerated by one party, and absolutely denied by another, of which few could point out the immediate causes, and no one could foretell the probable extent. Meanwhile, the effects of the poor laws over the southern and south-eastern districts of England, became every day more apparent. It became obvious to the most unreflecting, that they were gradually altering the rights, both of property and of industry, the relations between the poor and the rich, the labourer and his employer, and the habits and feelings of the agricultural, and in many places of the town population.

All these causes, and many others which it would be tedious and almost impossible to enumerate, have given to the political sciences, during the last sixty years, an interest which no study, except perhaps that of theology during the early progress of the Reformation, ever acquired. And this at a period when the extension of books and newspapers, and of the habits and means of discussion and communication, has been such as our most sanguine ancestors never anticipated.

Of all the branches of political knowledge, the most important, and the most applicable to the purposes of government, is that which considers the nature and the origin of wealth. It is true that the ultimate object of government, and indeed the ultimate object of every individual, is happiness. But we know that the means by which almost every man endeavours to increase his happiness, or, to use the common phrase, to better his condition, is by increasing his wealth. And to assist, or rather to protect him in doing this, is the great difficulty in government. All the fraud, and almost all the violence, for the prevention of which government is submitted to, arise from the attempts of mankind to deprive one another of the fruits of their respective industry and frugality. To counteract these attempts, a public revenue must be raised and expended; and, as I have already remarked, neither of these operations can be well executed or well judged of by persons ignorant of Political Economy. It may be added, that the desire for unjust gain, which, among savages, produces robbery and theft, assumes, among civilised nations, the less palpable forms of monopoly, combination, and privilege; abuses which, when of long standing, it requires much knowledge of general principles to detect or expose, and which it is still more difficult to remedy without occasioning much immediate injury to individuals.

I think, therefore, that I may venture to say, that no study ever attracted, during an equal period, so much attention from so many minds, as has been bestowed, during the last sixty years, on Political Economy. I do not mean that this attention was acknowledged, or even that all those who have been framing and repeating theories respecting the modes in which wealth is created, increased, or diminished, have been aware that they were political economists. Most of them as little suspected it as M. Jourdain that he was speaking prose. But every country gentleman who has demanded protection to agriculture, every manufacturer who has deprecated free trade, every speculator who has called for paper currency, every one who has attacked, and almost every one who has defended, the measures of the minister for the time being, has drawn his principal arguments from Political Economy.