light; and so on. Economics is often said to be the science of wealth. What, then, is wealth? What is that quality of things which constitutes them wealth? Economies can only be the science of the laws which govern the phenomena relating to that quality which constitutes things wealth.

It was long an assured opinion in this country that Adam Smith was the founder and creator of political economy and free trade. A once prominent politician is reported to have said that political economy and free trade sprang perfect and complete from the brain of Adam Smith, as Minerva did from the head of Jupiter. Such ideas, however, show a complete ignorance of the history of Economics, and are now quite abandoned by all persons who have studied the subject.

In fact, it is contrary to nature that it should be so. Great sciences are not created by a book. They invariably arise from small beginnings, just as the mighty Danube flows from a spring in the garden of a German burgher. Men begin to observe certain phenomena connected with some single general fundamental concept. Then others extend it to a larger number of phenomena based on the same concept: and so at last, by the contributions of an increasing number of observers, it grows into a great science, just as the Danube from a tiny spring is swollen into a mighty river by multitudes of tributary streams.

Every one with a scientific instinct can at once perceive that Adam Smith's work is pervaded by a combative air, that every part of it is evidently written at something preceding, and that it was intended to overthrow a prior system.

As a matter of fact, Economics was founded as a science by an illustrious sect of philosophers in France in the middle of the last century, who were the first to perceive and declare that there is a positive and definite science of Economics, based upon demonstrative reasoning, in the same way as the physical sciences.

The science of Economics, like medicine, has arisen out of the calamities and misery of mankind, caused by the violation of true economic principles; and every advance in economic theory has originated in some great pressing practical evil.

The first department of Economics to be reduced to scientific principles was that of money. Charlemagne caused the pound weight of silver to be adopted as the standard of money in all Western Europe; and he divided it into 240 pennies. The mediaeval sovereigns clipped, curtailed and debased their coinages, but declared that the clipped and debased coin should pass at the same value as good coin. Philip le Bel was particularly conspicuous for issuing debased coin, for which he was consigned to the Inferno by Dante. This degradation of the coin produced such intolerable evils and misery to the people that Charles V of France referred the matter to one of his councillors, Nicolas Oresme, who addressed to him a treatise on money, which may be said to stand at the head of modern Economics. In consequence of similar evils in Poland, Sigismund I requested Copernicus to draw up a treatise on the subject. This has recently been discovered and printed in the new edition of his works. These two treatises laid down the true principles of money, which are now accepted by all sound Economists.

For many centuries all governments enacted laws regarding trade without suspecting that there are any fixed principles on the subject. Sometimes they favoured free trade, sometimes protection; sometimes they cockered up one species of industry, sometimes another, according to the whim of the moment. They never seem to have had the faintest idea that the true principle was to leave every industry alone, and allow each one to develop itself according to its natural tendencies.

Every one has heard of the glories of the reign of Louis XIV; but few probably have any idea of the terrible reaction, and the incredible disasters and misery of the end of his reign. These may be learnt from contemporary writers and also from Taine's History of the Ancient Régime. Soon after the death of Louis XIV, John Law was allowed to try in France his scheme of paper money, which had been previously rejected by the Scottish Parliament. The result was that disastrous catastrophe known by the name of the Mississippi Scheme. In 1749 Turgot, then a young man of

twenty-two, began to reflect upon these terrible calamities, and endeavoured to discover the error of Law's system. Turgot associated with himself Gourlay, an eminent merchant who was a keen advocate of free trade, Quesnay the king's physician, Le Trosne, Mirabeau père, the Abbé Baudeau, and many others, who formed themselves into a powerful sect under the name of the Economists.' These men were the first to perceive and declare that there is a positive and definite science which may be named Economics.

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They found France divided into a number of separate and semi-independent provinces, each of them surrounded with customhouses, which were an intolerable barrier to commercial intercourse; every species of industry was loaded with minute and oppressive regulations; a very large portion of the human race was groaning under the bonds of slavery; in every country persons were relentlessly persecuted for their religious opinions. The Economists held that these commercial, personal and religious oppressions were contrary to the fundamental rights of mankind.

They proclaimed as the indefeasible natural rights of mankind the freedom of person, the freedom of opinion, and the freedom of exchange or of commerce.

Quesnay (who was the real founder of the science) and his followers, reflecting on the intolerable misery they saw around them, struck out the idea that there must be some great natural science, some principles of eternal truth founded on nature itself, with regard to the social relations of mankind, the violation of which was the cause of the hideous misery of their native land. The name Quesnay first gave to it was natural right; and his object was to discover and lay down an abstract science of the natural rights of men in all their social relations. This science comprehended their relations towards the government, towards each other, and towards property. The term politique in French might in a certain way have expressed this science; but the word was so exclusively appropriated to the art of government that they adopted for it the name 'political economy,' or 'economical philosophy'; and hence they were named

'the Economists.' Dupont de Nemours, one of their number, proposed the name of physiocratie, or the government of the nature of things; and hence they were often called the physiocrates; but the word, having been appropriated to certain doctrines of the sect which are now shown to be erroneous, and abandoned by all subsequent Economists of note, has fallen into disuse, and the term political economy, or Economics, which is now more commonly used, has survived.

Now it is evident that this wide and extensive scheme comprehends not only a single science, but a whole multitude of sciences; and we shall henceforth confine ourselves strictly to that part of it which relates to commerce or exchanges.

Quesnay's first publication, Le Droit Naturel, contains a general inquiry into these natural rights; and he afterwards in another work, called Maximes Générales du Gouvernment Économique d'un Royaume Agricole, endeavoured to lay down, in a series of thirty maxims or general principles, the whole basis of the economy of society. The twenty-third of these declares that a nation suffers no loss by trading with foreigners; the twenty-fourth declares the fallacy of the balance of trade; the twenty-fifth says: 'Let entire freedom of commerce be maintained; for the regulation of commerce, both internal and external, the most sure, the most exact, the most profitable to the nation and to the State, consists in entire freedom of competition.' These maxims entirely overthrew the prevailing system of political economy. This was the work of Quesnay and his followers; and, notwithstanding certain errors and shortcomings mentioned below, they are unquestionably entitled to be acknowledged as the founders of political economy and free trade.

We may now give a brief abstract of the doctrine of the Economists, by which they vindicated the principle of liberty and the right of property.

The Creator has placed man upon the earth with the evident intention that the race should prosper; and there are certain physical and moral laws which conduce in the highest degree to ensure its preservation, increase, well-being and

improvement. The correlation between these physical and moral laws is so close that if either be misunderstood, through ignorance or passion, the others are also. Physical nature, or matter, bears to mankind very much the relation which the body does to the mind. Hence the perpetual and necessary relation of physical and moral good and evil to each other.

Natural justice is the conformity of human laws and actions to natural order; and this collection of physical and moral laws existed before any positive institutions among men. And while their observance produces the highest degree of prosperity and well-being among men, the nonobservance or transgression of them is the cause of the extensive physical evils which afflict mankind.

If such a natural order exists, our intelligence is capable of understanding it; for if not, it would be useless, and the sagacity of the Creator would be at fault. As, therefore, these laws are instituted by the Supreme Being, all men and all states ought to be governed by them. They are immutable and irrefragable, and the best possible laws; they are necessarily the basis of the most perfect government, and the fundamental rule of all positive laws, which are only for the purpose of upholding that natural order which is evidently the most advantageous for the human race.

The evident object of the Creator being the preservation, the increase, the well-being, and the improvement of the race, man necessarily received from his origin not only intelligence, but instincts conformable to that end. Every one feels himself endowed with the triple instincts of wellbeing, sociability, and justice. He understands that the isolation of the brute is not suitable to his double nature, and that his physical and moral wants urge him to live in the society of his equals in a state of peace, goodwill and concord. He also recognizes that other men, having the same wants as himself, cannot have less rights than himself, and therefore he is bound to respect their right, so that other men may observe a similar obligation towards him.

These three ideas-the necessity of work, the necessity of society, and the necessity of justice-imply three others—