[115] “Poverty is the fruit of Political Economy. . . . Political
Economy requires death to come to its aid; . . . it is the theory of
instability and theft.”—«Proudhon», ‹Contradictions Économiques›,
t. xi. p. 214. “If the people want bread, . . . it is the fault of
Political Economy.”—‹Ibid.›
XXV. RELATIONS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY WITH MORALS, WITH
POLITICS, WITH LEGISLATION
[116] The author has unfortunately left nothing on the subject
of the four chapters with which he appears (‹see ante›, p. 30) to
have intended to conclude the present work, except the following
introduction to his projected chapter on the Relations of Political
Economy with Religion.
The line which separates the field of Political Economy from the
wider domains of Morals, Politics, and Legislation is perhaps by no
writer more accurately marked than by Mr Senior in the admirable
introduction to his article “Political Economy” in the ‹Encyclop.
Metropolitana›.
“The questions, to what extent and under what circumstances the
possession of wealth is, on the whole, beneficial or injurious to
its possessor, or to the society of which he is a member? what
distribution of wealth is most desirable in each different state
of society? and what are the means by which any given country can
facilitate such a distribution?—all these are questions of great
interest and difficulty, but no more form part of the science of
Political Economy, in the sense in which we use that term, than
Navigation forms part of the science of Astronomy. The principles
supplied by Political Economy are indeed necessary elements
in their solution, but they are not the only or even the most
important elements. The writer who pursues such investigations is,
in fact, engaged on the great science of Legislation; a science
which requires a knowledge of the general principles supplied by
Political Economy, but differs from it essentially in its subject,
its premises, and its conclusions. The subject of legislation is not
wealth, but human welfare. Its premises are drawn from an infinite
variety of phenomena, supported by evidence of every degree of
strength, and authorizing conclusions deserving every degree of
assent, from perfect confidence to bare suspicion. And its expounder
is enabled, and even required, not merely to state certain general
facts, but to urge the adoption or rejection of actual measures or
trains of action.
“On the other hand, the subject treated by the Political Economist,
using that term in the limited sense in which we apply it, is not
happiness, but wealth; his premises consist of a very few general
propositions, the result of observation or consciousness, and
scarcely requiring proof or even formal statement, which almost
every man, as soon as he hears them, admits as familiar to his
thoughts, or at least as included in his previous knowledge; and his
inferences are nearly as general, and, if he has reasoned correctly,
as certain as his premises. Those which relate to the nature and the
production of wealth are universally true; and though those which
relate to the distribution of wealth are liable to be affected by
the peculiar institutions of particular countries, in the cases, for
instance, of slavery, legal monopolies, or poor laws, the natural
state of things can be laid down as the general rule, and the
anomalies produced by particular disturbing causes can be afterwards
accounted for. But his conclusions, whatever be their generality
and their truth, do not authorize him in adding a single syllable
of advice. That privilege belongs to the writer or the statesman
who has considered all the causes which may promote or impede the
general welfare of those whom he addresses, not to the theorist
who has considered only one, though among the most important, of
those causes. The business of a Political Economist is neither to
recommend nor to dissuade, but to state general principles which it
is fatal to neglect, but neither advisable nor perhaps practicable
to use as the sole, or even the principal, guides in the actual
conduct of affairs. In the meantime, the duty of each individual
writer is clear. Employed as he is upon a science in which error,
or even ignorance, may be productive of such intense and such
extensive mischief, he is bound, like a juryman, to give deliverance
true according to the evidence, and to allow neither sympathy with
indigence nor disgust at profusion or at avarice, neither reverence
for existing institutions nor detestation of existing abuses—neither
love of popularity nor of paradox, nor of system, to deter him from
stating what he believes to be the facts, or from drawing from those
facts what appear to him to be the legitimate conclusions. To decide
in each case how far these conclusions are to be acted on belongs
to the art of government, an art to which Political Economy is only
one of many subservient sciences, which involves the consideration
of motives, of which the desire for wealth is only one among many,
and aims at objects to which the possession of wealth is only a
subordinate means.”—«Translator.»