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DEDICATION.

WILLIAM H. GAYLORD, ESQ.,

OF CLEVELAND, OHIO,

TO WHOSE BROTHERLY CARE IT IS LARGELY DUE THAT I LIVED TO TRANSLATE THEM,

THESE VOLUMES

ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

Our literature is rich enough in works on the principles of Political Economy. So far as the translator is informed, however, it possesses none in which the science is treated in accordance with the historical method. We may therefore venture to express the hope that this translation will fill a place hitherto unoccupied in the literatures of England and America, and fill it all the more efficiently and acceptably, as Professor ROSCHER is the founder and still the leader of the historical school of Political Economy. Were this the only recommendation of our undertaking, it would not be a useless one. But a glance at Professor ROSCHER'S book will convince even the most hasty reader that its pages fascinate by their interest and are rich in treasures of erudition which should not remain inaccessible to the English student from being locked up in a foreign tongue.

The present translation has received, throughout, the revision of the author, and should any imperfections remain in the rendering of his thought into English, the blame is certainly not his, for his revision has been most minute.

The three appendices have been supplied by Professor ROSCHER expressly for this edition. As they are intended to form a part of the work on the Political Economy of Industry and Commerce, on which he is now engaged, he authorizes their publication in English, only by the publishers of this edition of his principles; and only for the purpose of being added to the present translation. He desires especially that their appearance in their present shape should not in any way interfere with any of his rights in his forthcoming volume, and that they should not be translated into any language nor translated back into German.

The essay of Mr. WOLOWSKI, on the historical method in Political Economy constitutes no part of Professor ROSCHER'S book, and neither he nor its author, but only the translator, is responsible for its appearance here. In it the reader will find a short sketch of the life of Professor ROSCHER, brought down to the date at which the essay was written. The translator has little to add to that sketch, all the information he possesses in addition to what it contains being embraced in the following lines from a letter received by him from the author in answer to a request that he would supply the biographical data not to be found in WOLOWSKI'S essay: "You might perhaps say ... that I have repeatedly declined calls to the Universities of Munich, Vienna and Berlin, but that I have never regretted remaining in Leipzig."

The acknowledgments of the translator are due, in the first place, to the eminent author himself, for the revision of the plate-proof of the entire work, and then to Professor WILLIAM F. ALLEN, of the University of Wisconsin, for his interest in the progress of the enterprise, and for many valuable suggestions; also to Professor W. G. SUMNER, of Yale College, for some excellent hints as to the best translation of certain words in the Appendix on Paper Money.

Of the peculiar method which I have followed in this work, and which will produce still better fruits in the succeeding volumes, I have given a sufficient explanation in ?? 26 ff., and all I desire now is to say a few words on the relation the notes bear to the text. The careful reader will soon be convinced that of the many citations in this work, not one has been made from a vain desire of the display of erudition. Part of them serves as the necessary proof of surprising facts adduced, but which are little known. Another part of them is intended to incite the reader to the study of certain questions nearly related to those treated in the text, but which are still different from them. The object of the greater number is to supply information concerning the history of economic principles. As far as the sources at my command permitted, I have endeavored to point out the first germs, the chief stages of development, the contrasts, and, finally, what has been thus far attained in economic science. This sometimes required some little victory over self, inasmuch as I was conscious of having independently discovered certain facts, when I afterwards found that some old and long-forgotten writer had made similar observations. Thus, this work may serve both as a handbook and as a history of the literature of Political Economy. Students of the science know how little has thus far been done by writers in this direction. And hence I shall be very grateful to those who labor in the same field, if they will, either by writing to me personally, or through the medium of the press, inform me when I have erred in ascribing a truth, or a scientifically important error, to its earliest author.

I have already said in the title that this work is intended not for the learned only, but for all educated men, for men of a serious turn of mind, who desire truth and science for their own sake. Like that ancient historian, whom I honor above all others as my teacher, I desire that my work should be useful to those, ???? ??????????? ??? ?? ????????? ?? ????? ??????? ??? ??? ????????? ???? ????? ???? ?? ?????????? ???????? ??? ??????????? ???????.

UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG,

I have changed the titles "Ricardo's Law of Rent," and "The Malthusian Law of the Increase of Population," which I formerly used, for others. But I would not be misunderstood here. I hold it to be a duty of reverence in the learned--as it has long been practiced in the case of the natural sciences--in the sciences of the human mind to call the natural laws, methods etc., in acquainting us with which, some one particular investigator has won very distinguished merit, by the name of that investigator. In the case of the law of rent, the application of this rule would as unquestionably entitle Ricardo to this honor as it would Malthus in that of the increase of population, spite of the fact that Ricardo may not have succeeded in finding the best possible form of the abstraction, and although Malthus even, in a one-sided reaction against a former still greater one-sidedness, was not always able to steer clear of positive and negative errors. Recent science has endeavored, and successfully, to examine the facts which contradict the Ricardoan and Malthusian formulations of the laws in question, and to extend the formulas accordingly. I have myself contributed hereto to the extent of my ability. But, in the interval, it is not hard to comprehend that, while this process of elucidation is going on, most scholars, those especially possessed more of a dogmatic than of a historical turn of mind, should estimate these two leaders more in accordance with their few defects than with the great merits of their discoveries. If, therefore, I now drop the title "Malthusian law," it is to guard hasty readers from the illusion that ?? 242 seq. teach what the great crowd understand by Malthusianism; when they might, perhaps, omit that portion entirely. For my own part, I have no doubt that, when the process of elucidation above referred to shall have been thoroughly finished, the future will accord both to Ricardo and Malthus their full meed of honor as political economists and discoverers of the first rank.

PRELIMINARY ESSAY.

Preliminary Essay On The Application Of The Historical Method To The Study Of Political Economy,

Member Of The Institute Of France.

It is no foolish desire to make a vain display of citations, that induces us, at the beginning of this essay, intended to point out the results of the application of a new method to the study of Political Economy, to invoke the authority of a poet and moralist, of a jurisconsult and of a philosopher. The writer finds in the words just quoted the loftiest expression of the thought which dictates these lines, viz.: that the impartial researches of history, a profound feeling of man's moral and material wants, and the light of philosophy, should govern in the teaching of a science, the object of which is to show us how those things which are intended to satisfy our wants are produced and distributed among the several classes or individuals of a nation; how they are exchanged one against another, and how they are consumed.

The nineteenth century affords us something more than the admirable spectacle of the rapid and fertile development of mechanical power and natural forces. This is but one of the aspects, we might even say but one of the results, of the general progress of the human mind. The renovation of moral and intellectual studies has served as a starting point for the application to facts of the conquests of thought. Science has preceded art.

Neither does history, as thus understood, confine itself to mere description; it also assumes the office of judge. While it pulls down much that passion and inaccuracy have reared, and thus restores respect for the past, it does not turn that past into a fetish. It looks it boldly in the face and questions it, instead of prostrating itself before it and worshipping it with downcast eyes. Thus, by plainly showing us the many bonds which tie us to it, it escapes at once both the rashness of impatience and the wearisomeness of routine.

The impartiality it inculcates is not indifference; and there is no danger that the justice it metes out to past ages shall degenerate into a vain scepticism or a convenient optimism.

The study of history, thus understood, has another advantage; it accustoms us to those patient and disinterested investigations, to those lengthy labors, the positive result of which at first escapes us for a time, only to burst on our eyes, with so much more brilliancy, when rigorous research has succeeded in discovering it. It frees us from the deadly constraint of immediate utility.

There is nothing more fatal to science than the feverish impatience for results which obtains only too much in our own days, and which induces people to run after him who is in the greatest hurry, and which leads to hasty conclusions.

"Research undertaken from a disinterested love of science," says the learned Hugo, one of the masters of the historical school of law in Germany, "that research which at first promises no other advantage but truth and the culture of the mind, is precisely that which brings us the richest rewards. Would we not be behind, in all the sciences, if we had clung only to those principles, the utility of which in practice was already known? Do we not, to-day, from many a discovery, reap advantages of which its author never dreamed?"

Doubtless this tendency, unless restrained by other demands, is not exempt from danger. We may be carried away by the attraction peculiar to these noble studies, withdraw into antiquity and fall into a species of historical mysticism which ends in the affirmation, that whatever has been is true, absolutely, and which, instead of confining itself to the explanation of transitory phenomena, invests them with all the dignity of principles. We shall endeavor to avoid the peril pointed out by Mallebranche. "Learned men study rather to acquire a chimerical greatness in the imagination of other men, than to acquire greater breadth and strength of mind themselves. They make their heads a kind of store-room, into which they gather, without order or discrimination, everything which has a look of erudition,--I mean to say everything which may seem rare or extraordinary and excite the wonder of other people. They glory in getting together, in this archaeological museum, antiques with nothing that is rich or solid about them, and the price of which depends on nothing but fancy, chance or passion."

Contempt for the past is associated with a passion for reform. Men think of destroying that which should only be transformed. They condemn everything that has been, unconditionally, and launch out towards a new future. The suffering which has been gone through irritates and troubles the mind. The work of pulling down is so easy, it is supposed that the work of building up is equally so. Hence systems rise, as if the world were to begin anew. The pride of liberty and of human action becomes the principle of science; and, like all new principles, it pretends to exclusive and absolute dominion. Rationalism governs; abstract philosophy ignores the traditions and the requirements of the life of nations; and finds now in it, as in geometry, nothing but principles and deductions. The memory of recent oppression causes us to act as Tarquin did, and to level down the higher classes instead of elevating the inferior. Liberty and equality then govern by their negative side, instead of exercising the positive and beneficent influence they should have, to develop all forces to their utmost, to ennoble the mind, to give more elasticity to the soul and greater vigor to thought, to give birth to those varied forms and to that moral energy, which should bring us nearer to final equality in the bosom of God.

Feindlich ist des Mannes Streben Mit zermalmender Gewalt Geht der Wilde durch des Leben Ohne Rast und Aufenthalt,

and make himself worthy of liberty, by the exercise of manly virtue! Because the form has been changed, we believe that we have changed human nature.

And, indeed, if the will of man be all-powerful, if states are to be distinguished from one another only by their boundaries, if everything may be changed like the scenery in a play by a flourish of the magic wand of a system, if man may arbitrarily make the right, if nations can be put through evolutions like a regiment of troops; what a field would the world present for attempts at the realization of the wildest dreams, and what a temptation would be offered to take possession, by main force, of the government of human affairs, to destroy the rights of property and the rights of capital, to gratify ardent longings without trouble, and provide the much coveted means of enjoyment. The Titans have tried to scale the heavens, and have fallen into the most degrading materialism. Purely speculative dogmatism sinks into materialism.

Nothing is more natural than that these excesses should produce other excesses, in a contrary direction. Moved by hatred or fear of revolutionary absolutism, nations seek an asylum in governmental absolutism, or they retrograde towards the middle ages, and consider the mutual bond of protection and dependence of that period as the ideal and the realization of true liberty. History is no longer the organic development of social life, and man, like a soldier that thoughtlessly and capriciously has gone beyond his place of supplies, is obliged to retrace his steps. The reaction is clearly defined. The past is opposed to the present, not as a lesson to be turned to advantage, but as a model which must be hastily accepted; and men become revolutionary in a backward direction.

However, history, rigorously studied, knows neither these complaisances nor these weaknesses. It does not descend to the apotheosis of a past which cannot return again. The real historical spirit consists in rightly discerning what belongs to each epoch. Its object is, by no means, to call back the dead to life, but to explain why and how they lived. In harmony with a healthy philosophy, it assigns a limit to the vagaries of arbitrary will, beyond which the latter cannot go. It unceasingly calls us back, from the heights of abstraction, to positive facts and things.

In the creation of systems, only one thing was wont to be forgotten, men, who were treated, in them, like so many ciphers; for intellectual despotism has this in common with all despotic authority. History teaches us that we can reach nothing great or lasting, but by addressing ourselves to the soul. If the soul decays, there can be no longer great thoughts or great actions. Society lives by the spirit which inhabits it. It may, for an instant, submit to the empire of force, but, in the long run, it hearkens only to the voice of justice. It was thus that the greatest revolution which history records, that of Christianity, was accomplished. It addressed itself only to the soul; but by changing the hearts of men, it transformed society entirely.

The violent struggle between an imperious dogmatism and an unintelligent and mistaken attempt at a retrogressive movement is resolved into a higher view, which permits the union of conservatism and progress. Violent attempts and rash endeavors made, threatened to bring contempt on the noblest teachings of philosophy, and to make them repulsive to man; and, on the other hand, a blind respect for the institutions consecrated by history threatened to stifle all examination and all freedom of judgment.

But a healthier doctrine has permitted us to understand, that we are continuing the work of preceding generations; that we are developing the germs which they successively sowed; that we are perfecting that which they had only sketched, and that we are letting drop that which has no support in the social condition of man. Every thing is connected; each thing is linked to every other; nothing is repeated. The hopes of sudden and total renovation, based on absolute formulas, vanish before the touch of this solid study. This shows us how firm and unshaken are those reforms which have begun by taking hold of the minds of men, the precise spirit of which had penetrated into the souls of whole nations before they had manifested themselves in facts.

Law and Economy constitute a part of the life of nations in the same way that language and customs do. The power of history in no way contradicts the supremacy of reason.

These two tendencies, the rationalistic and the historical, are everywhere found face to face. They carry on an eternal warfare, which is renewed in every age, under new names and new forms. Accomplished facts and renovating thought divide the world between them. They at one time moderate its speed, and at others, spur it on its way. But these two forces, instead of compromising the destinies of humanity by their opposing action, maintain and balance them, as the contrary impulses given by the hand of the Great Architect has peopled the universe with worlds which gravitate in space.

Victor Cousin, a very competent authority on the subject, has said that the history of philosophy is the torch of philosophy itself. The remarkable works which have enriched it in this direction are well known. History, on its side, is enlightened by philosophy. Thus, it teaches us not to despise facts, but at the same time not to be slaves to precedent. It does equal justice to the incredulous and to the fanatic, to too supple practitioners and to intractable theorizers.

It is necessary to draw a distinction between physical law and the law of intelligent beings. Doubtless the existence of men as well as that of animals is limited by time. They both live and die; but the soul escapes the necessities of material nature.

It was necessary for us to insist upon these principles. It was necessary for us to show that there is a law independent of positive and local law, a law which is not the expression of an arbitrary will, but an emanation from the nature of things.

Hence come the features in common which we meet with everywhere, and the variable forms which develop law in harmony with the special conditions of each civil society.

We must descend into the very depths of human nature to discover these eternal and permanent laws; and if the mere effort of the mind should not reach them directly, they might be discovered in the phenomena of the life of nations. History affords us the counter-proof and confirmation of the philosophical doctrine.

The development of society does not afford a mathematical expression of these higher truths. It gives them a form which is unceasingly modified in the written law. The person who discovers in them nothing but an absolute rule, looks upon the changes as evidences of caprice and error. He alone understands the revolutions of things who knows their cause and the necessity which produces them.

Solon was right when he gave the Athenians not the most perfect laws, but the best which they could bear.

It is not in the attempts contemporary with the infancy of society, or nearly so, that we are to look for the complete realization of the precepts of the natural law; for principles obey the rule laid down by Aristotle. "The nature of each thing is precisely that which constitutes its end; and when each being has attained its entire development, we say that that is its own proper nature."

The ideas of natural law are purified in proportion as society grows enlightened and free; but the truth appears only successively in the phases it passes through. It allows us to grasp one aspect of itself after another, but does not surrender itself entirely, at any one moment, to the investigations of the historian or the jurisconsult.

History and philosophy interpenetrate and complement one another.

The two schools, that of philosophy and that of history have met in our day, in the field of law. Who is there that does not remember the great and noble contest carried on, about the beginning of this century, between two descendants of Frenchmen who had sought a refuge in Germany, and who united in their own persons, and in so marvelous a manner, the different aptitudes of the country they owed their origin to, and of the land that gave them birth,--between Thibaut and Savigny?

It would be difficult to find a scientific question of a higher character, debated by champions more worthy to throw light upon it.

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