“Thus I receive with sincere gratitude, all the works, both useful and profound, which have appeared in our day on the history of law. It would be folly in me to deny the impetus which the study of positive law has received. New sources have been discovered. Their newness and importance have excited the zeal of many scholars who have studied them profoundly; a fact which made a review of the older sources, still by far the most important, necessary. These two circumstances soon rendered it imperative to proceed to the making of scrupulous dogmatic researches. Thus there now is a new life among jurisconsults, and a great activity, which, it is my hope, may continue long.”
Roscher's complete work he calls “A System of Political Economy.” It embraces the four parts above referred to; but each of these parts constitutes an independent work. The first part, or the Principles of Political Economy, covers the ground generally covered by English treatises on Political Economy.
Besides the works above mentioned, Professor Roscher has written Ansichten der Volkswirthschaft aus dem geschichtlichen Standpunkte, 2d ed., Leipzig, 1861; Die deutche Nationalökonomik an der Grenzscheide des sechszehnten und siebenzehnten Jahrhunderts, Leipzig, 1862; Gründungsgeschichte des Zollvereins, Berlin, 1870; Betrachtungen über die geographische Lage der grossen Städte, Leipzig, 1871; Bertrachtungen über die Währungsfrage der deutschen Münzreform, Berlin, 1872; Geschichte der Nationalökonomik in Deutschland, Munich, 1874; Nationalökonomik des Ackerbaues, 8th ed., Stuttgart, 1875.—Translator's note.
In France, according to Cordier (Mémoire sur l'Agriculture de la Flandre Française), the wheat harvest yielded, in
1817, forty-eight million hectolitres, with a value in exchange of two thousand and forty-six million francs; in
1818, fifty-three million hectolitres, with a value in exchange of one thousand and four hundred and forty-two million francs; in
1819, sixty-four million hectolitres, with a value in exchange of one thousand and one hundred and seventy million francs.
A rise in the value in exchange of wheat, such as was witnessed in 1817, is synonymous with a decline in the value in exchange of money, and of all those goods whose money price has not risen. It is no objection to the views here advocated, that when the necessaries of life are very scarce, the want of clothing, furniture, articles of luxury etc., is not felt so keenly as at other times, and that the value in use of these commodities really falls; and vice versa.
Rau (Lehrbuch, I, § 61 ff.) distinguishes between the concrete or quantitative value which a certain kind of goods may have for a certain person, under certain circumstances, and the abstract or species-value which a whole class of commodities may have for men in general.
But F. J. Neumann, (Tübinger Zeitschrift, 1872, p. 288 ff.) objects, that even the abstract value of a commodity always suggests the relation of a definite number of concrete men to a definite quantity of goods; else, by the expression, value of goods, is to be understood not what it is generally meant to signify, but only the capacity to satisfy a single want.