Four Introductory Lectures on Political Economy

by Nassau William Senior

Among the contemporaries of Stewart were the French Economists, or, as they have lately been called, the Physiocrats, forming the school founded by Quesnay. With the exception, however, of Turgot, they wrote on the whole art of government. Their works, indeed, contain treatises on Political Economy according to my third proposed definition, that is to say, “on the institutions and habits most conducive to that production, accumulation, and distribution of wealth, which is most favourable to the happiness of mankind;” but they contain much more. Quesnay and his followers lived in a country subject to political institutions, of which many were mischievous, more were imperfect, and all were unsettled. That the existing system of government was bad, every one acknowledged. The economists believed that they had discovered why it was bad. They believed that they had discovered that agriculture is the only source of wealth, and rent the only legitimate source of public revenue. And they proposed, therefore, to substitute for the innumerable taxes on importation, on exportation, on transit, on production, on sale, on consumption, and on the person of man, which then formed the fiscal system of France, a single tax on the rent of land. So far their precepts were founded on the science of Political Economy. But when they proposed the separation of legislative and judicial functions, and required the whole legislative power to center in an absolute hereditary monarch, they drew their premises from other branches of mental science. I have said that Turgot was an exception; and it is remarkable, that the only man among the disciples of Quesnay who was actually practising Political Economy as an art, is the only one who treated its principles as a science. His “Réflexions sur la Formation, et la Distribution des Richesses,” published in 1771, is a purely scientific treatise. It contains not a word of precept; and might have been written by an ascetic, who believed wealth to be an evil.

We now come to Adam Smith, the founder of modern Political Economy, whether it be treated as a science or as an art. He considered it as an art. “Political Economy,” he says, in the introduction to the fourth book, “proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or, more properly, to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and, secondly, to supply the state or common weal with a revenue sufficient for the public service. It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign.” The principal purpose of his work was to show the erroneousness of the means by which political economists had proposed to attain these two great objects. And in the then state of knowledge, this could be done only by proving that many of them mistook the nature of wealth, and all of them the laws according to which it is produced and distributed. The scientific portion of his work is merely an introduction to that which is practical.

Of the five books into which the work is divided, it occupies only the first and second. The third is an historical sketch of the progress of national opulence. The fourth, the longest in the whole work, considers the direct interferences by which governments have attempted to lead or force their subjects to become rich; and decides, “that every system which endeavours, either by extraordinary encouragements, to draw towards a particular species of industry a greater share of the capital of the society than would naturally go to it, or, by extraordinary restraints, to force from a particular species of industry some share of the capital which would otherwise be employed in it, is in reality subversive of the great purpose which it means to promote. It retards, instead of accelerating, the progress of the society towards real wealth and greatness; and diminishes, instead of increasing, the real value of the annual produce of its land and labour.”

“All systems,” he adds, “either of preference or of restraint, therefore, being thus completely taken away, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord. According to that system, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to: first, the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice; and, thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions, which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain.”

The fifth book, which points out the means by which the duties of the sovereign may best be performed, and the necessary public revenue provided, is, in fact, a treatise on the art of government. It treats of the subsidiary arts of war, of jurisprudence, and of education. It considers the advantages and disadvantages of religious endowments, and even the details of the opposed systems of patronage and popular election, and of equality and inequality of benefices. It considers at great length the modes and effects of taxation and of public loans, and concludes by an elaborate plan for diminishing the taxation of Great Britain, by requiring all the British dependencies, of which Ireland and North America then formed part, to contribute directly to the imperial treasury.

I have often doubted whether we ought not to wish that Adam Smith had published his fifth book as a separate treatise with an appropriate title. It is by far the most amusing and the easiest portion of the “Wealth of Nations,” and must have attracted many readers whom the abstractions of the first and second books, if they had formed a separate work, would have repelled. On the other hand, the including by so great an authority, in one treatise, and under one name, many subjects belonging to different arts, has certainly contributed to the indistinct views as to the nature and subjects of Political Economy, which appear still to prevail.

The English writers who have succeeded Adam Smith, have generally set out by defining Political Economy as a science, and proceeded to treat it as an art.

Thus Mr. M‘Culloch states, as the proper subjects of Political Economy, “the laws which regulate the production, accumulation, distribution, and consumption of the articles or products possessing exchangeable value.” Political Economy, then, is a science. But he goes on to say, that “the object of Political Economy is to point out the means by which the industry of man may be rendered most productive of wealth, the circumstances most favourable to its accumulation, and the mode in which it may be most advantageously consumed.” So defined, Political Economy is an art,—a branch, in fact the principal branch, of the art of government.

Mr. James Mill says that he has in view merely to ascertain the laws of production, distribution, and consumption. His treatise, therefore, ought to be merely scientific. But when he says that Political Economy ought to be to the state what domestic economy is to the family, and that its object is to ascertain the means of multiplying the objects of desire, and to frame a system of rules for applying them with the greatest advantage to that end, he turns it into an art.

Mr. Ricardo is, however, an exception. His great work is little less scientific than that of Turgot. His abstinence from precept, and even from illustrations drawn from real life, is the more remarkable, as the subject of his treatise is distribution, the most practical branch of Political Economy, and taxation, the most practical branch of distribution.