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

We cannot delay long on this subject, nor analyze the arguments advanced by Thibaut and Savigny. What interests us at present is not so much the question debated, as the intellectual movement to which it gave birth. Savigny sustained the ancient law, Thibaut attacked it. Numerous and distinguished jurisconsults ranged themselves on the one side and the other. A new school grew up which, with the most brilliant success, made law throw light on history and history on law.

The application of the historical method to the study of law was productive of the most happy results.

Without acknowledging it to themselves, the chiefs of the contending parties were each obeying a political impulse. Savigny was by his birth and his tastes carried into the camp of conservatism; Thibaut, led by his convictions, into the liberal ranks. Nevertheless, the natural elevation of their genius preserved them from all exaggeration. The glorious defender of tradition preserved a liberal spirit, and the ardent advocate of reform desired no upheaval.

Men can no more renounce law than language, the forms of which last they have gradually modified in order to better translate their thoughts into words. The legislator's task is the successive elaboration of obligatory provisions. He will sometimes oppose and sometimes second the natural progress of law; but, in doing so, it will ever be necessary for him to ascend to the nature of things, and grasp their relations, if he would not go astray in practice, or lose himself among the successive and partial changes to which the illustrious Berlin professor would confine the legitimate ambition of legislative power. To go beyond this, in an age like ours, seemed to him to be a work of destruction. However, far from denying the influence of thought, and therefore of philosophy, acting within its sphere, Savigny invokes its fertile aid.

The life and activity prevailing in the study of law, and the brilliant successes that study has recently achieved, are due, in great part, to the illustrious representatives of the historical school. We may add, here, that the French historical school, which has so worthily inherited the spirit of Montesquieu, has not achieved less in this direction than the older German school. It has reconciled the opposing but not mutually hostile, tendencies of Savigny and Thibaut. It has conscientiously scrutinized facts to show their concatenation, and to allow their meaning and bearing to be clearly grasped. A French jurisconsult, who is at the same time our highest authority in the natural law, opened the way by his excellent essays on the necessity of reforming the historical studies applicable to law; on the influence of the legists on French civilization etc.; and by his prefaces, equal in value to whole works, on hypothecation, sales, loans, partnership, charter-parties etc. He may truly be said to have renewed the ancient and prolific alliance of history and law.

Instead of pursuing a pure abstraction, this historical school has confined itself to the knowledge of the life of man and the evolution of society. It has applied to law, with what success is well known, the principle which has regenerated the social sciences, philosophy, letters, history, Political Economy,--sciences which are, so to speak, different provinces of one intellectual empire, which interpenetrate one another without being confounded one with another, between which no jealous barrier should be raised, and between which reciprocity of exchange should be encouraged by the suppression of factitious duties, which have existed only too long.

We need not dwell any longer on the character of the historical method as applied to law, nor on the services it has already rendered. On this point, there can be no two opinions. And, if any one wonders that we should speak of it at all, in a work on Political Economy, we can only say to him, that we have done so to call his attention to an instructive precedent, and for the further reason that the same method is peculiarly well adapted to the study of Political Economy. Its advantages are the same here, its tendencies the same, and the same motives exist to induce us to use it here. In describing the successive phases of the question in the case of law, we have performed an important part of the task we had imposed upon ourselves, of vindicating the employment of the historical method, in the sphere of Political Economy.

The human mind has need of being able to know where it is at any moment, surrounded, as it is, by so many roads, running in so many different directions. It ought to account to itself for its progress, its deviations from the right path, and for its mistakes. History alone can throw any light on questions which are not simply intellectual curiosities, but which, rather, are most deeply concerned with the vital interests of society. It confirms the noble teachings of philosophy, by showing how our life is made up of one unchanging tissue of relations, and how man, even if he may vary their colors, and change their design, cannot renew their texture.

It teaches us to admire nothing, and to despise nothing, beyond measure. It enlightens us concerning questions of a very complicated nature. Witnessing the evolutions of humanity, following the development of social facts and theories, we better discern principles, and grow wary in relation to the alchemists of thought, who imagine that society may be made to undergo a transformation between the rising and the setting of the sun.

The increase of production, then, appears an instrument of elevation in the moral order. It is energy of soul, intelligence and manly virtue which constitute the chief source of the wealth of nations; which create it, develop it, and preserve it. Wealth increases, declines, and disappears with the increase, decline and disappearance of these noble attributes of the soul.

Labor is the child of thought. Nothing happens in the external world which was not first conceived in the mind. The hand is the servant of the intellect; and its work is successful, beautiful or useful in proportion to the activity and development of the intellect, and in proportion as the just, the beautiful and the good exert their power over it.

Production is, therefore, not a material, but a spiritual, work. How, then, can acts and their morality be separated? How not understand that the market of labor has its own distinct laws, and that education, even from a material stand-point, becomes the highest interest and the most important duty of society, since on it depends the efficiency of labor?

From the time that, after a long series of years, the doctrine of Christianity had permeated the law of the civilized world; from the time that the teaching of Paul, that all men are children of one Father, took form and body, and that the principle of the equality of all men before their Maker, was supplemented by the doctrine and by the practice of that equality before the laws, the thinking masses have endeavored to discover the wherefore of their actions, and the why of their sufferings. They have called the past to account, and inquired why they have obtained so limited a share.

The people, therefore, think; and it is, therefore, a matter of importance that they should think aright. It is of importance, that they should be guarded against fallacious Utopian promises. Henceforth, there is no security for the stability of the world but in the contentment of minds. There is no rest for mankind, unless men will understand the conditions of their destiny; unless, instead of running,

"Toujours insatiable et jamais assouvis,"

after the intoxicating cup of material enjoyment--for wants not governed by the intellect and the heart are infinite in number, and the gratification of one gives birth to another--they submit to the law of sacrifice, and give play to the noblest faculty with which the Creator has endowed us, moral empire over self.

We shall meet on this road, hard of ascent, not only peace of soul, but goods, more real and more numerous, than those with which the allurements of error would dazzle our eyes. The greatest obstacles to be overcome are not material ones, but moral difficulties. As Franklin says, in substance, he that tells you you can succeed, in any way but by labor and economy, is a quack.

But labor is more productive in proportion as it is more intelligent, as hand and mind keep pace with each other, as good moral habits generate order and voluntary discipline.

Economy is sacrifice, binding the present to the future, widening the horizon of thought, inspiring foresight, lengthening the lever of human activity, by providing it with new instruments.

Life ceases to be a worry about how the body shall be sustained, and the material world becomes the shadow of the spiritual. The former is made to serve the latter, and man's free effort lifts him into a higher region of thought, and into a larger field of action. The more mind there is put into a piece of work, says Channing, the more it is worth.

We, men of to-day, are lookers-on at a marvelous spectacle. Steam furrows the earth. Industry has taken an immense start. Mechanical force bends the most rebellious materials. Chemistry, physics and the natural sciences are discovering a new world. But whence all this? What is the principle of this new life? We answer: intellectual and moral progress. Mind has grown; the soul has been expanded. God has permitted man to be free, and furnished him with the means to be so.

Thus man, as Mignet has said, becomes that mighty creature to whom God has given the earth for the vast theater of his action, the universe as the inexhaustible object of his knowledge, the forces of nature for the growing service of his wants, by allowing him, by ever increasing information, to obtain an ever increasing amount of well-being.

History preserves the student from being led astray by a too servile adherence to any system. It exposes the folly of the "social contract," and of the idyllic dreams of the advantages of savage life. It shows that nature, instead of being prodigal of her treasures, distributes them with a niggardly hand, and that it is necessary to conquer her by labor, intelligence and patience before we can control her.

It shows us human liberty growing stronger every day, thanks to moral and intellectual progress, supported by the two powerful props of property, the complement of man, the material reflection of his spiritual power; and capital, the fruit of abstinence, the symbol of moral power and the result of enlightened activity.

Hence, we believe that Political Economy cannot dispense with the services of morals and philosophy, of history and law; for these are branches of one common trunk, through all of which the self-same sap circulates.

The isolation of the theory of Political Economy is peculiar to our own day. In more remote times, we find this study confounded with the other moral sciences, of which it was an integral part. When the genius of Adam Smith gave it a distinct character, he did not desire to separate it from those branches of knowledge without which it could only remain a bleached plant from the absence of the sunlight of ethics.

We must renounce the singular idea, that thousands of years could pass away without leaving any trace of what enlightened men had thought and elaborated in the matter of Political Economy, among so many nations, and that people should never have thought of cultivating this rich intellectual domain, while in every other direction, it is easy for us to ascend by a road already cleared up to the most remote antiquity.

Doubtless, it is not in their modern forms that the elements of politico-economical science are to be found, in the past. But when we succeed in reuniting the scattered and broken parts; when we have made our way into the customs, decrees, ordinances, capitularies, laws and regulations of those times; when, so to speak, we come, unaware, upon the life of nations, in the most ingenuous and confidential documents which reflect it most faithfully because most simply, we may well be astonished at the results obtained. Where we expected, perhaps, to find only erudition, we reap a rich harvest of lessons which are all the more valuable for being disinterested.

Legislative and administrative acts frequently develop real economic doctrines. It is easy to discover in them the onward course of a theory which plunges directly into practical applications.

Political Economy is not, as we have just said, a new science. It has been a distinct science only a short time. Until the eighteenth century, it was confounded with philosophy, morals, politics, law and history. But it does not follow, that, because it has grown so in importance, as to deserve a place of its own, its intimate relationship with the noble studies which had until then absorbed it should cease. There is another consequence also to be deduced from this. From the moment that Political Economy ceases to be considered a new science, it finds a long series of ancestors behind it, since it is compelled to investigate a past to which so many bonds unite it. This duty may increase its difficulties, but, at the same time, it singularly adds to the attractions of a study which, instead of presenting us only with the arid deductions of dogmatism, comes to us with all the freshness and all the color of life.

We may allow those who make Political Economy simply a piece of arithmetic to ignore these retrospective studies and their importance; for mathematics has little to do with history. But it is otherwise with the life of nations. These would discover whence they come, in order to learn whither they are tending.

It is not the result of mere chance that the greatest economists have been both historians and philosophers. We need only mention Adam Smith, Turgot, Malthus, Sismondi, Droz, Rossi and L?on Faucher. It is too frequently forgotten that the father of modern Political Economy, Adam Smith, looked upon the science as only one part of the course of moral philosophy which he taught at Glasgow, and which embraced four divisions:

In the first part of his course, as we learn from the same authority, he examined the various political regulations not founded on the principle of justice but in expediency, the object of which is to increase the wealth, the power and the prosperity of the state. From this point of view, he considered the political institutions relating to commerce, finance, the ecclesiastical and military establishments. His lectures on the different subjects constitute the substance of the work he afterwards published on the wealth of nations. A pupil of Hutcheson, Adam Smith always applied the experimental method, "which, instead of losing itself in magnificent and hazardous speculations, attaches itself to certain and universal facts discovered to us by our own consciousness, by language, literature, history and society." Before taking the professorship of philosophy, Adam Smith had taught belleslettres and rhetoric in Edinburgh, in 1748. He had written a work on the origin and formation of languages; and it was because he had profoundly studied the moral sciences that it was given to him to inaugurate a new science and to become a great economist. Mr. Cousin has laid great stress on Adam Smith's taste and talent for history. "Whatever the subject he treats, he turns his eyes backward over the road traversed before himself, and he illuminates every object on his path by the aid of the torch which reflection has placed in his hand. Thus, in Political Economy, his principles not only prepare the future but renew the past, and discover the reason, heretofore unknown, of ancient facts which history had gathered together without understanding them. It is not saying enough to remark that Adam Smith possessed a great variety of historical information; we must add that he possessed the real historical spirit." Thanks to this eminent faculty of his, the Glasgow philosopher acquired great influence over minds. In 1810, when the French empire had reached the zenith of its greatness, Marwitz wrote: "There is a monarch as powerful as Napoleon: Adam Smith." We need not recall Turgot's historical researches.

Malthus' chief title to distinction, his work on Population, is as much a historical work as a politico-economical one; and it is not sufficiently known that he was professor of history and Political Economy in the college of the East India Company at Aylesbury.

We need say no more on this subject. The works of the other writers whom we have mentioned are too well known to permit any one to think that they excluded history and moral science from the study of Political Economy. Hence the school which has risen up in Germany, and which is endeavoring to do for Political Economy what Savigny, Eichhorn, Schrader, Mommsen, Rudorff, and so many other illustrious scholars have done for jurisprudence, cannot be rightly accused of rashness. It has done nothing but unfurl the noble banner borne by the most venerated masters of the science.

Side by side with William Roscher, we must mention a young economist, Knies, formerly professor at the University of Marburg, but whom political persecution compelled to accept a secondary position at the gymnasium of Schaffhausen, for a time, and who fills, to-day, in the University of Freiburg, in Breisgau, a position more worthy of his great talent. We hope, in a work which we intend to publish, on Political Economy in Germany, to make the public acquainted with the works of this writer. They deserve to attract the most serious attention. We know of few works which equal his Political Economy, written on the historical method. We shall also have something to say of another economist, formerly professor at Marburg, a victim, also, of the power of the elector of Hesse, Hildebrand, now professor at the University of Zurich. His National-OEkonomie is a book replete with interest, and we have nowhere met with a better criticism of Proudhon's system, than in its pages. If the new school had produced but these three men, it would still have left its impress on the history of the science.

Other works, no less important, will claim our attention in the book to which we have already devoted many years of labor. If we carry out our intention, we shall review the works of a great many scholars, of great merit, whose names only are, unfortunately, known outside of Germany. The works of Rau, of Hermann, of Robert Mohl, of Hannsen, Helferich, Sch?tz, Kosegarten, Wirth etc., are a rich mine, from which we hope to draw much valuable information. Nor shall we neglect the original productions of J. Moser, the Franklin of Germany, nor the quaint, but sometimes striking, ideas of Adam M?ller. Lastly, our learned friend, Professor Stein of Vienna, will afford us an opportunity to show forth the merit of important and extensive works, animated by the philosophic spirit. For the present, we must confine ourselves to a view of the application of the historical method to Political Economy.

There is a rather widespread prejudice existing against this order of works, a souvenir of the struggle carried on formerly, between Thibaut and Savigny, which inclines people to suppose that the historical school leans towards the political doctrines of the past, and that it is hostile to the liberal spirit of modern times. Nothing can be farther from the truth. The names of Roscher, Knies and Hildebrand are sufficient to remove this prejudice. Their works, inspired by an enlightened love for progress, do not allow of such a misconstruction. The historical point of view does not consist in the worship of the past, any more than in the depreciation of the present. It does not view the succession of phenomena as a fluctuation of events without unity or purpose. On the contrary, the historical method harmonizes wonderfully well with the wants of genuine progress. The changes accomplished bear testimony to the free and creative power of man, acting within the limit permitted to it by the degrees of intelligence reached, of the development of morals, and of individual liberty. The philosophy of Political Economy, which is the result of this calm teaching, free from the passions of party--for science acknowledges no adherence to party--is like that of law, opposed to the, more or less, ingenious or rash dreams, which build the world over again in thought. In showing how, at all times, humanity has understood and applied the principles which govern the production of wealth, it may say, with the Roman jurisconsult: "Justitiam namque colimus ... aequum ab iniquo separantes ... veram nisi fallor philosophiam, non simulatam affectantes." "The human mind," says Rossi, "endeavoring to attain to a knowledge of itself, estimating its strength, taking a method, and applying it with a consciousness of its mode of procedure to the knowledge of all things; such is philosophy. Without it, there is no science in any branch of human knowledge." Thus do we rise, with the aid of a critical mind, by careful investigation and great sagacity, to the truths founded on observations made.

Let us for a moment accept these definitions; what is the consequence? That there are two sciences, the one of which, purely speculative, has more to do with philosophy than with the permanent conflicts which agitate the world; the other of which could not alone furnish us with rules in practice, nor with a formulary for the measures to be taken in a given case, since such a pretension would be both vain and ridiculous, but which would inform the practical judgment of men charged with the solution of the numberless difficult and complicated questions which come up every day. If pure science refuses to interfere in the affairs of this world; if, as the learned originator of the doctrine we are just now considering gives us to understand, it would compromise the solution of questions by the intoxication of logic, and the ambition of perfect system; if, consequently, it is to be worshipped like a motionless and inactive divinity, how could this platonic satisfaction suffice us? Would not the opponents of economic doctrines be disposed to acknowledge all the principles, provided the consequences to be drawn from them were left to themselves; and would they not come to us, bristling with arguments drawn from the circumstances of nationality, time and space, to refute the possibility of applying pure science?

On ne vaincra jamais les Romains que dans Rome.

This, therefore, is the ground we must explore. We must develop applied Political Economy which takes cognizance of external circumstances. To do this, no one will question that the best and most decisive of methods is the historical, which concerns itself with time, space and nationality, and which leads to proper reformation where reformation is wanted.

Moreover, principles will be no less firmly established by historical induction than by dogmatic deduction, and, moreover, science will be inseparable from art. We are not of those who deny principles, or who challenge them. What we desire is, that they should not be worshiped as fetiches, but that they should enter into the very life-blood of nations.

Further: the abstract deductions of pure science do not leave us without disquietude, since they treat man much more like a material than like a moral force. Under the vigorous procedure of speculative mathematics, man becomes a constant quantity for all times and all countries, whereas he is, in reality, a variable quantity. All the elements put in play are ideal entities, the reverse of which we find in poetry, where

Tout prend un corps, une ame, un esprit, un visage!

and where everything loses the character of life, and is transformed into inanimate units. Man is something different from the sum of the services he may be made to render, and from the sum of enjoyments which may be procured for him. We must not run the risk of lowering him to the level of a living tool; and from the moment that we are required to take his moral destiny into account, what becomes of abstract calculation?

To understand this maxim aright, we must go back to the oppressive regime of ancient society. Quesnay's formula was, first of all, a protest against the restraints which hampered the free development of labor. But it did not tend to abrogate the office of legislator, nor to deprive society or the individual of the support of the public power which watches over the fulfillment of our destiny.

The good that comes to them yields satisfaction to him, and the evil that befalls them falls on him likewise. He cannot turn back entirely upon his own personality. Besides his own interest, he feels and shares another interest--the interest of all. Personal interest is perfectly legitimate. The love of self cannot be condemned. The Savior himself has enjoined us to love our neighbor as ourselves. To love him more than ourselves is a very high and beautiful virtue. It is the self-abnegation which inspired Christian heroes. But heroism is rare, and cannot be imposed, nor taken, as a rule. Personal interest is a powerful stimulant, and the superior harmony of social relations makes it contribute to the general good.

What must be condemned is a fatal deviation of this sentiment which destroys its effect and narrows its actions. What we need to prevent is the degeneration of personal interest into an egotism which parches, instead of fertilizing, and which compromises the future by the exclusive search after present advantage; for egotism is short-sighted. On the other hand, the broader and more generous feeling which inclines us to sympathize with our fellow beings in their sorrows, and to unite our destiny to theirs; that is, the feeling of the general interest, has a limit too.

It would be falsified if it absorbed the individual; if it destroyed the most powerful motive-force by drying up the abundant source of activity; if it attacked moral energy by enervating responsibility; if it extended the circle of results obtained to such an extent that scarcely any one should feel the rebound.

The evil produced by egotism, that sad travesty of personal interest, appears under a form quite as formidable when the general interest takes the form of communism. The co?peration of personal interest and of the general interest is always necessary, both for individual profit and social advantage. There is as much danger in annihilating the individual as in exalting him. History furnishes us with memorable examples of this. It does not allow us to go astray in the narrow ways of a peevish and jealous personality, nor to lose ourselves in the vague labyrinth of a chimerical and false communism. The latter would destroy what constitutes the power and dignity of man. It would wipe out the most prominent features of his noble nature, by destroying the support of energy and activity and the food of moral force.

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