Besides, it is evident, that, of statistics in general, economic [pg 095] statistics constitute a chief part, and precisely the part most accessible to numerical treatment. As these economic statistics need to be always directed by the light of Political Economy, they also furnish it with rich materials for the continuation of its structure, and for the strengthening of such foundations as it already has. They, are, moreover, the indispensable condition of the application of economic theorems to practice.
Section XIX.
Private Economy—Cameralistic Science.
The meaning of the term cameralistic science (Cameralwissenschaft) can be explained only by the history of the cameralistic system.[146] From the end of the middle ages, we find, in most German countries, an institution called the Council (Kammer) whose province it was to administer the public domain, and to watch over regal rights. At first, a mere governmental commission, it was not long before it developed into an independent board. This change had taken place in Burgundy as early as the year 1409. It was in that country that the emperor Maximilian became acquainted with the institution; and by the erection of the aulic councils at Innspruck and Vienna (1498 and 1501), he gave the principal impulse to the imitation of it in Germany. As, at that time, the division of labor was very little developed, and personal and collegial authority all the more developed in consequence, it is easy to [pg 096] conceive that a great part of all the new and rapidly increasing business of police administration was confided to these councils. They were charged especially with what is known to-day as economic police (Wirthschaftspolizei) and an important part of the administration of justice, in its lower departments, was turned over to their subordinates. The most eminent men who wrote, in the seventeenth century, on cameralistic matters, laid great stress on the point, that it was the duty of the aulic councils to entertain not only fiscal questions, but that it was within their province also, to determine questions of economic police.[147] The interest of absolute princes must have greatly favored these cameralistic institutions, for they were in their hands docile tools, which escaped the annoying intervention of the states of their realms.
By degrees, the knowledge necessary to these council officials, and which found no place in the lectures on law, were formed into a special body of doctrine. After such men as Morhof and Thomasius had prepared the way,[148] Frederick William I., himself a clever cameralist, and author of the masterly financial system of Prussia, took the important step of founding, at Halle and Frankfurt on the Oder, special chairs of economy and cameralistic science; which, considering the time, were very ably filled by Gasser and Dithmar. (1727.) [pg 097] There was thus formed in the German universities a distinct school of cameralists, which, through Jung, Rössig and Schmalz, reached to the nineteenth century. The term cameralistic science, the creature of chance, was used, it must be said, with very various limits to its meaning.[149]
However, Political Economy in Germany developed out of the science of law and the cameralistic sciences, while in England and Italy it had its origin chiefly in the study of questions of finance and foreign commerce.