or when it has been devised to have a religion established by law, as if men could have any right or any interest in regulating each others' consciences; as if an individual could sacrifice to civil society those opinions on which he thinks his eternal salvation depends, or as if mankind were to be saved or damned by the lump. Wherever true toleration, that is to say, the absolute incompetency of government over the conscience of individuals is established, there an ecclesiastic, when he is admitted into the national assembly, is but a citizen; when he is excluded from it he becomes again an ecclesiastic. par "I do not perceive that there has been sufficient care to reduce to the lowest possible number the kinds of business which the government of each state is to manage; or to separate the object of legislation from those of the general and from those of the ticular and local assemblies, who, by performing all the functions of detail in government, may free the general assemblies from engaging therein, and so to take from the members of these latter, all means and perhaps all desire to abuse an authority which would only be occupied about objects general in their nature, and therefore unconnected with the little passions which agitate mankind. "Nor do I perceive that due attention has been paid to the great distinction, and the only one founded in nature, between two classes of men. I mean those who are proprietors in lands and those who are not; to their interests, and consequently to their different rights, with respect to legislation, to the administration of justice and of the police, to the contribution for public expenses, and to their employments. "No fixed principle is established in regard to imposts. Each state is supposed to be at liberty to tax itself at pleasure, and to lay its taxes upon persons, consumptions, or importations, that is to say, to erect an interest contrary to that of the other states. "They suppose in all the states, that they have a right to regulate commerce. They even authorize the executive bodies, or the governors, to prohibit the exportation of certain products upon particular occasions; so far are they from seeing that the law of entire liberty of all commerce is a corollary of the right of property; so far are they still involved in the mists of European illusions. "In the general union of the states with one another, I do not see a coalition, a melting of all the parts together, so as to make the body one and homogeneous. It is only an aggregate of parts, always too separate, and which have a continual tendency to divide themselves, from the diversity of their laws, their manners, their opinions; from the inequality of their future progress. It is only a copy of the republic of Holland, and this had no occasion, like that of America, to dread the possible growth of any one of its provinces. This whole edifice has been supported upon the false basis of very ancient and very vulgar policy; upon the prejudice which nations, which provinces may have, concerning interest as a province or a nation, different from those which individuals have of being free and defending their properties against robbers and conquerors; a pretended interest in carrying on more commerce than others, not in buying merchandise of foreigners, but in forcing these to consume our productions and the works of our manufacturers; a pretended interest in having more extensive territory, in acquiring such and such a province, such and such an island, such and such a town; an interest in inspiring other nations with dread; an interest in excelling them in the glory of arms, or that of arts and sciences. "Each of these prejudices is cherished in Europe, because the ancient rivalry of nations and the ambition of princes obliges all states to be armed for defence against their armed neighbors, and to regard a military force as the principal object of government. Such is the good fortune of America, that she cannot have for a long time an external enemy to fear, if she does not become selfdivided; therefore she may and ought to estimate at their true value those pretended interests, those grounds of discord, which are all that endanger her liberty. The sacred principle of freedom of commerce being considered as the necessary consequence of the right of property, all the pretended interests of trade vanish before it. The pretended interest of possessing more or less territory vanishes also, when the territory is justly considered as not belonging to nations, but to the individual proprietors of the soil; and when the question, whether such a canton or such a village ought to belong to such a province or such a state, is not decided by the pretended interest of that province or that state, but by the interest which the inhabitants of the canton or village have in assembling themselves to transact their affairs, in places the most convenient of access, when that interest, being measured by the length or shortness of the way which a man can go to manage his most important, without too much injury to his common, concerns, becomes the natural and physical measure of the extent of the jurisdiction of states, and establishes throughout an equilibrium of extent and power, which annihilates all the danger of inequality, and all pretensions of superiority. "The interest of being dreaded, becomes null when we make no demands, and when we are in a situation not to be attacked, even by a considerable force with any hope of success. "The glory of arms cannot compare with the felicity of living in peace. The glory of arts and sciences belongs to every one who has spirit to acquire it. There is a harvest of this kind abundantly sufficient for everybody; the field of discoveries cannot be overtilled, and ALL profit by the discoveries of all. "I imagine that the Americans have not felt these truths so strongly as they ought to be felt by them, for the security of the happiness of their posterity. I blame not their leaders. There was a necessity of providing against the exigencies of the moment by some sort of union against an enemy actually present and formidable. There was not time to correct the defects in the constitution or in the models of the different states. But there should be a dread of perpetuating them, and an application to the means of uniting opinions and interests, and of reducing them to uniform principles throughout all the states."* Well for us it would have been, had we had the wisdom to heed the advice of Turgot. But Turgot was considered a doctrinaire, and practical men who are "men who practise the blunders of their predecessors," have a natural horror for and antipathy of thinkers whose ideas they have not the intelligence to comprehend, nor whose advice the wisdom to follow. Had Turgot been simply a statesman, however great his deserts, there might be some excuse to ignore him in a sketch of the history of Political Economy; but Turgot has written much and well on politico-economical subjects. His Reflexions sur la Formation et la Distribution des Richesses, published in 1766, the Lettres sur la Liberté du Commerce des Grain, published in 1770, and the Mémoire sur les prêts d'Argent, stamp him as one of the most profound and original economists of his day. To the Physiocrates belongs the honor of having most thoroughly analyzed and demonstrated the productive force of agricultural labor; to Adam Smith the honor of having been the first to demonstrate the great law of the division of employment and exhibiting the productive forces which flow therefrom. Turgot, however, has performed a work equal in importance, by his thorough analysis of the origin and functions of capital. The account of American writers is as meagre as the one upon foreign thinkers. Raymond, Rae, and Carey, are the only ones noticed, and they so briefly that for aught information Mr. Perry vouchsafes to us as to the peculiarity of their thoughts, they might as well not be mentioned at all. To this criticism Mr. Perry may reply that his object was not to write a history of Political Economy, but simply to sketch in an introductory chapter * Euvres de Turgot. Paris, 1844. Tome ii., page 805, &c. the history of ideas in the science for the purpose of preparing the mind of the student for the character of the questions which he is called upon to master. To see how that task is well done, we advise Mr. Perry to study the introductory lectures of Rossi's Cours d'Economie Politique, or the opening chapters of Rosher's erudite System der Volkswirthschaft. We claim that Mr. Perry has done an unnecessary thing in introducing his work with a history of the science, and has not even the excuse of having done it well. The very narrow limits of his work did not allow him to do justice to this branch of the subject, even if he had the capacity and necessary information to do so; he therefore should not have undertaken it, as the absence of necessary data of the history of Political Economy misleads his students more than the information which he furnishes instructs them. On entering upon the body of the work we become still more painfully aware that Mr. Perry is not up with the age in Political Economy. He says on page 23: "Expediency is so radically distinct from duty there is no need of proving that Political Economy is not to be reckoned a part of moral philosophy at all. The ideas of obligation on which the science of morals is founded are totally distinct ideas. There is one word that marks and circumscribes the field of morals. That word is ought" (?)-duty, the author probably means "there is one word that marks and circumscribes the field of economy. That word is value. Political Economy does not aspire to place its feet upon the ponderous imperatives of moral obligations. It finds a solid and adequate footing upon the expedient and useful." Let us try to ravel what all this means. If Mr. Perry intends to say that expediency -using the word "expediency" in its narrower acceptation-and duty are not correlatives, he utters a truism familiar to every child of six years of age which has been taught not to take some other child's doll though it may covet it, because it is wrong to do so. If that be the meaning of the first sentence quoted then he leaves us to infer that Political Economy is the science of expediency in its conventional and narrower acceptation, instead of its being, as we believe it to be, a science of principles diametrically opposed to expediency in that sense. If, on the other hand, Mr. Perry used the word expediency in its etymological sense, then we insist that there is no conflict between duty and expediency, but that they are in strictness the same. Duty was the nebulous and indistinct idea formed by mankind of what should be done by men in their relations towards each other. Political Economy analyzes the mutual relations of men and teaches us what must be done by man in a social state if he desires to be prosperous and happy. Whatever the moral law ordains and Political Economy discountenances will sooner or later be disclaimed by the moral law also. The moral law enjoins us to be charitable; Political Economy says be charitable, but do not forget that in the proportion that you accustom men to eleemosynary aid, in that proportion you undermine their manhood, and that the indiscriminate giving of pence for the purpose of easing our consciences makes skilful mendicancy more profitable than unskilled labor to the great injury of mankind at large. Therefore in this case Political Economy sets the proper and rational limit to the moral law. If in obedience to what they deem the moral law a number of philanthropists should subscribe a fund towards erecting a foundling hospital in our midst, Political Economy would teach those gentlemen that in so doing they considerably add to vice in the community by facilitating women in getting rid of the fruits of their unchastity, and thus remove one of the safeguards to virtue by removing one of the inconveniences of vice. Political Economy would not have the high moral duty it has if it were not its mission to analyze the natural laws which control man in a social state and thus prove which of the moral laws have a raison d'etre, and which have not. Molinari, in the introduction to his admirable work says: "L'economie politique est une science essentiellement religieuse, en ce qu'elle manifeste plus qu'ucune autre l'intelligence et la bonté de la Providence dans le gouvernement superieur des affairs humaines; l'economie politique est une science essentiellement morale, en ce qu'elle demontre que ce qui est utile s'accorde toujours, en definitive avec ce qui este juste, l'economie politique est une science essentiellement conservatrice, en ce qu'elle devoile l'inanite et la folie des theories qui tendent a-bouleverse l'organisation social, en rue de realiser intype imaginaire. Mais l'influence bienfaissante de l'economie politique ne s'arrete pas la. L'economie politique ne vient pas seulement en aide a la religion, a·la morale et a la politique conservatrice des societes, elle agit encore directement pour améliorer la situation de l'espece humaine. Voici de quelle maniere. Quand ou considére la société, on demeure frappé des inégalités qu'elle recéle dans son sein, des richesses et des misères qui s'y trouvent juxtaposées, des alternatives de prospérité et de décadence qui s'y présentent, tantôt il semble prés de succomber sous le faix des maix qui l'accablent. Eh bien, que fait l'economie politique? Elle remonte par ses patients analyses, aux source du bien être et du mal être du corps social; elle divulgue les causes de la prospérité et de la décadence des nations. Elle examine l'influence des institutions et des lois sur la condition des masses |