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

| nevertheless most serious matter for | consideration. Let us strive tonight if We may, to get some light on this phase l of economic influence. Let us see why | economies and politics have grown apart in the immediate past, and con- slider whether there is any hope for their reunion in the immediate future. 1 Our work naturally divides itself into | two parts. First we must acquaint ourselves with the history of economic theory, and note the changed concep- tons of economic study which have suc- cessively developed. Then we must do the same thing with political theory, and note the changes both in it's under lying ideas and in the method of apply ing them.
 l It is hardly necessary to say that the conception of economic theory has fluc- tuated widely from age to age, and that the sphere of economic study has all tered correspondingly. Going back in the history of this science, as we must in so many others, to Aristotle, we find that in his mind the relations between economies and politics were simple. Economics meant to him the rela-ordar- ing the affairs of a household, politics the art of ordering the affairs of a state. Each had it's own clearly defined field of enquiry The two subjects had indeed points of similarity; man who was familiar with the one was better prepared thereby to deal with the other; but fundamentally their spheres were as distinct as those of geography and astronomy. As a part and subordi- 1 nate part of the science of economies Arict tnt1o +> ,~t. 4l,,N unworthy science or rather art of chre- matistics-the science or art of making money. It is notorious that Aristotle looked upon this part of the subject with disapproval. His idea of business was like that of Mr. Caleb Garth in Middlemarch, to whom it never meant money transactions, but the skilful ap l plicaton of labor" But in the minds of Aristotle's successors the subject of money and money-making assumed constantly increasing importance in the study of private economy. This was in fact an almost necessary consequence of substituting the labor of freemen for the labor of slaves. If the householder was able to obtain labor by physical com pulsion he could despise money and all things connected herewith; but if he had to buy his labor he was forced to pay attention to the means of buying it. Thomas Aquinas has no more love for money getting than did Aristotle, but the social conditions of the time of Thomas Aquinas rendered it necessary to take more account of money getaing than did the social conditions of the time of Aristotle. It was also gradual ly seen that money economy formed a better means of public service than the older system of slave labor. Interest, at first unreasonably condemned was afterwards tolerated and ultimately de- tended by economists. In the middle of the seventeenth century the term econ omy had come to be associated almost exclusively with the work of money getting. More than this the principles of chrematistics or of economy in it's modern sense, were applied to the con- duct of public affairs and gave rise to the study of political economy, in which ideas derived from the study of private business were applied to the work of the statesman. The cameralists applied the methods of domestic economy to matters of public finance-the conduct of the business affairs of the govern ' farther, and tried to apply these same methods, by legislation, to the affairs of the whole people as we'll as of the gov ernment itself In other words, they proclaimed the duty of the statesman to assist his people as we'll as his govern ment in main money. At the end of the seventeenth century political economy was universally understood as an at la ,t,,n ns,oI1 nf, getting to the conduct of national af- fairs and with this practice in view 1t was assiduously studied by financiers and by statesmen
 The eighteenth and nineteenth centu- ries have witnessed reaction. It be- gan with the physlocrats who protest ed against the aims of the mercantil- ists, and combated the idea that na- tional wealth could best be subserved by national money making, contending that the food of the people, rather than the gold or silver in circulation meas ured the national prosperity. It was carried still further by the English economists, who criticised the means adopted by the mercantilists no less than their aims, and showed how indi- vidual freedom conduced to the devel- opnent of public wealth, in many cases at any rate, far ore surely than legisla- tive activity. A new conception of po- litical economy thus arose. with broad CT aims and broader foundations than the old It is not necessary to say to an audience like this how great was the gain both in scientific truth and in practical utility. It is perhaps more necessary to point out some of the dan gers which attended the change.
 In the first place, there was often a loss of concreteness. The older political economy expressed it's results in pounds, shillings and pence. They might be true or they might be false, but they were at any rate in a form where they were capable of measure ment and verifcation. Not without good cause did the mercantilists claim for their reasonings the title of politi- cal arithmetic. We may apply to them the words, at once appreciative and critical, which Bagehot applied to George CornewaIl Lewis: "Of course he was not uniformly right-there were some kinds of facts which he was by mental constitution not able wholly to appreciate; but his view of every sub- ject though it might not be adequate, was always lucid. His mind was like a registering machine with a patent in- dex it took in all the data, specified enumerated them, and then indicated