whose monumental work on "Agriculture and Prices," written in the spirit of that school, has excited world-wide admiration. The younger men in America are clearly abandoning the dry bones of orthodox English political economy for the live methods of the German school. We may mention the name of Francis A. Walker, the distinguished son of Amasa Walker, as an American whose economic works are fresh, vigorous, and independent. Essentially inductive and historical in method, they have attracted wide attention and favorable notice on both sides of the Atlantic. This entire change in the spirit of political economy is an event which gives occasion for rejoicing. In the first place, the historical method of pursuing political economy can lead to no doctrinaire extremes. Experience is the basis; and should an adherent of this school even believe in socialism as the ultimate form of society, he would advocate a slow approach to what he deemed the best organization of mankind. If experience showed him that the realization of his ideas was leading to harm, he would call for a halt. For he desires that advance should be made step by step, and opportunity given for careful observation of the effects of a given course of action. Again: this younger political economy no longer permits the science to be used as a tool in the hands of the greedy and the avaricious for keeping down and oppressing the laboring classes. It does not acknowledge laissezfaire as an excuse for doing nothing while people starve, nor allow the all-sufficiency of competition as a plea for grinding the poor. It denotes a return to the grand principle of common sense and Christian precept. Love, generosity, nobility of character, self-sacrifice, and all that is best and truest in our nature have their place in economic life. For economists of the Historical School, the political economy of the present, recognize with Thomas Hughes that "we have all to learn somehow or other that the first duty of man in trade, as in other departments of human employment, is to follow the Golden Rule-'Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you.'" "The old Teutonic Assembly rose again to full life in the New England town-meeting."— Freeman. "Samuel Adams, the helmsman of the Revolution at its origin, the truest representative of the home rule of Massachusetts in its town-meetings and General Court.”—Bancroft. "A man whom Plutarch, if he had only lived late enough, would have delighted to include in his gallery of worthies,-a man who in the history of the American Revolution is second only to Washington,-Samuel Adams."-John Fiske. IN HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL SCIENCE HERBERT B. ADAMS, Editor History is past Politics and Politics present History - Freeman SECOND SERIES IV SAMUEL ADAMS The Man of the Town-Meeting BY JAMES K. HOSMER, A. M. Professor of English and German Literature, Washington University, St. Louis, Mo. BALTIMORE N. MURRAY, PUBLICATION AGENT, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY APRIL, 1884 |