The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-12-28

lecture.
 ! And in the second place, with this loss of concreteness of conception came a loss of definiteness of aim; the almost ! inevitable result of substituting the principles of a science for the practice 1 of an art. This change was hardly mo- ticed in the first generation, when | Turgot and Smith and their followers were chiefly occupied in sweeping away old restrictions; but when it became a question of building up rather than of pulling down the loss was felt very strongly. The old political economy very often gave wrong advice, but at the very worst it was explicit and con- sistent advice. The new political econ- omy in it's anxiety to avoid errors falls | into vagueness of advice, and into ap- parent If not real inconsistency. For a presumptuous claim of knowledge it substitutes either controversies or con- fessions of ignorance; Fools rush in where angels fear to tread;" but this difference of political method has at times the disadvantage of lessaning the practical influence of angels upon the affairs of this world. As the art of po- litical economy gave place to the science | Ol GCOHOllilGS IL Ndo PietCGu dI dll lutN- itable disadvantage with those who sought for the easily mastered rules of an art which professed to teach them what they could do rather than the general principles of science which too often indicated only what they could not do.
 This was not the fault of the political economists. It was their fault howev- CT, that, when the problem of securing 1 practical influence became harder, they did not make more vigorous efforts to render their points clear to the states man, but oftentimes took refuge in the seclusion of the schools and there built up theories of society more interesting and profitable to the student than to the politician. The number of students who sought their lectures increased this | temptation. Instead of making it science for statesmen they were led to make it science for schoolmen, with all that complex terminology which Giddings so aptly calls it's jargon. In many cases this process has gone so far as to make economics a subordinate de- partment of psychology rather than i politics; a theory of motives starting 1 from assumptions that are never req lized completely, and ending in propo- 1 titions that can never be verified at all I am far from wishing to cast ridicule on metaphysical methods of political economy. Gourmet and Jevons and the Austrian school have taught us a great many things that we did not know be- fore. They have substituted good un- derlying metaphysics for bad underly- ing metaphysics. But the very excel <, lence of this foundation has tended to divert attention from the details of the 1 superstructure, which after all are the ones with which we have to deal in practical life. And I am disposed to think seriously that the excessive use of psychological terms and concep- tions, to the neglect of purely commer- cial ones, has been the most potent cause to weaken the influence of eco- nomists among statesmen and men of the world.
 Meantime theories of government and governments themselves were in the midst of a process of evolution which tended to carry them somewhat away from the influence of economic theory, even if that theory had remained the same, The Judiciary, the legislature and the administration were subject each of them to separate influences which made them less ready to rely on the political economist for advice and guidance.
 It might be thought that the judicial ry, at any rate, would never have be- come independent of economic consid- erations; for the scientific study of the law has had and still has close atTllia- tion with the scientific study of politi- cal economy. This utilization between economics and jurisprudence is mani fest alike in their data in their meth ods and their conclusions. The funda- mental datum of modern economics is property right This is also the datum and starting point of a large part of our l legal reasoning. The method of the economist is combination of the his torical and the deductive. He stud es the precedent by which property right has been established on the one hand, and deduces the consequences arising from such property rights on the other hand. This combination is also char acteristic of the methods of the judici- ary; the chief difference between econo- mists and courts being that the econo- mist considers how the individual iude- ment will act under the given condi- tions while the court considers how the public judgment will act. But this diff ference of standpoint ought not to lead to conflicting or even inharmonous con- clusions, for the economist shows over and over again how freedom of individ- ual judgment results in collective good and the Judiciary shows with equal force how the free activity of public Judgment in the pursuit of it's own ends leads to the highest measure of in- dividual good. Finally, the character. istic conclusions and precepts of the modern political economists are summed up in the two words "free competitions" and this is no less char. acteristicaly the conclusion of and precept of our law courts. Tn reIvino on competition to liberalize commercial practice, economists and lawyers have gone hand in hand; showing in tolera ply equal measure the glory of habitu,- al success in it's application and the odi. um of occasional error by it's misapp1i- cation.
 But economics and law have to some degree parted company not so much in hostility as in indifference, not s- much in denying one another's conclu. sions as in ignoring them. In the ear Her times economists and jurists were both concerned to connect their con-