FOUR
INTRODUCTORY LECTURES
ON
POLITICAL ECONOMY,
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.
LATE FELLOW OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE,
PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.
LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS.
1852.
London:
Spottiswoodes and Shaw,
New-street-Square.
CONTENTS
LECTURE I. CAUSES THAT HAVE RETARDED THE PROGRESS OFPOLITICAL ECONOMY.
LECTURE II. POLITICAL ECONOMY A MENTAL STUDY.
LECTURE III. REASONS FOR TREATING POLITICAL ECONOMY ASA SCIENCE.
LECTURE IV. THAT POLITICAL ECONOMY IS A POSITIVE, NOT ANHYPOTHETICAL SCIENCE.—DEFINITION OF WEALTH.
LECTURE I.
CAUSES THAT HAVE RETARDED THE PROGRESS OFPOLITICAL ECONOMY.
Political Economy, as a separate branch of study,may be said to be about a century old. Many of thefacts which are its subject-matter, have indeed attractedhuman attention from the earliest times; manyopinions, right or wrong, have been formed respectingthem, and many customs and laws, beneficial orinjurious, have been the consequence: but it wasnot until nearly the middle of the last century, thatany attempt was made to reduce those opinions intoa system, or to ascertain the grounds on which theywere founded, or even how far they were reconcilablewith one another. To M. Quesnay belongs thehonour of having first endeavoured to explain of whatwealth consists, by what means it is produced, increased,and diminished, and according to what lawsdistributed; in other words, of having been the firstteacher of Political Economy. In the course of hisinvestigations, he found that in the pursuit of wealthall governments had not merely mistaken the straightroad, but had frequently pursued a path leadingdirectly away from it. He found that instead of[4]endeavouring to attain a beneficial end by appropriatemeasures, they had been aiming at a useless resultby means totally ineffectual. Until his time it hadbeen supposed that wealth consists of gold and silver,and that the quantity of gold and silver in any givencountry is to be increased by encouraging the exportationand discouraging the importation of allother commodities, and by the perpetual interferenceof governments in the modes in which the labour oftheir subjects is exerted, and the objects to which itis directed. Quesnay showed that gold and silvermake the smallest and least important portion of thewealth of a country. And he showed that the abundanceof gold and silver, and of every other commodity,is to be promoted, not by restrictions onimportation, nor by bounties on exportation, but bythe absolute freedom of external and internal trade;by securing to every man the results of his industryor frugality, without attempting to order him whatto produce or how to enjoy.
His inquiri