Nassau William Senior

“ Quesnay showed that gold and silver make the smallest and least important portion of the wealth of a country. And he showed that the abundance of gold and silver, and of every other commodity, is to be promoted, not by restrictions on importation, nor by bounties on exportation, but by the absolute freedom of external and internal trade; by securing to every man the results of his industry or frugality, without attempting to order him what to produce or how to enjoy. ”

“ Of all the branches of political knowledge, the most important, and the most applicable to the purposes of government, is that which considers the nature and the origin of wealth. It is true that the ultimate object of government, and indeed the ultimate object of every individual, is happiness. ”

“ The definition which confines wealth to the things which cannot be acquired or produced without labour, differs little from mine, which confines it to things limited in supply. Whatever must be obtained by labour is necessarily limited in supply, the supply of labour itself being limited; and, on the other hand, there are, in fact, scarcely any, if there be any, commodities limited in supply and capable of transfer, which can be obtained without some labour. ”

“ I have said that a single art generally draws its premises from many different sciences. So a single science generally affords premises to many different arts. How numerous are the sciences which are applicable to the art of war. How numerous are the arts which depend in part on the principles of chemistry. And it is obvious that every increase of human knowledge must increase the influence of science on art. ”

“ Now, no one who is conversant with systematic treatises on Political Economy will question, that whenever a political economist has shown that, by acting in a particular manner, a labourer may obviously obtain higher wages, a capitalist larger profits, or a landlord higher rent, he concludes, as a matter of course, that they will certainly act in that manner. Political Economy, therefore, reasons from assumed premises—from premises which might be totally without foundation in fact, and which are not pretended to be universally in accordance with it. ”

“ If wealth be the subject of Political Economy, and wealth include all that man desires, Political Economy, whether a science or an art, is the science or the art which treats of human happiness—a subject, as I have already remarked, too extensive to be included in a single treatise. ”

“ It was proclaimed in France, and admitted, or scarcely denied, on the rest of the Continent, that governments are made for nations, not nations for governments; and that the public revenue is the revenue, not of the government, but of the nation,—not a property, but a trust,—not a rent or a tribute, but the purchase-money of the labour necessary to prevent foreign and domestic violence and fraud, paid over to the government merely as an administrator, unlawfully employed if applied to any other purpose, and unlawfully demanded if more than necessary for that purpose. ”

“ Every writer, therefore, on the art of Political Economy, is forced to prefix, or to interweave among his precepts, his own views of the science, and thus to add to the practical portion of his work a scientific portion of perhaps equal length. ”

“ Ought these questions to be resolved differently in an old country and in a colony, in a monarchy, in an aristocracy, and in a republic? If Political Economy be a branch of the art of government, these inquiries form a branch, though a very small one, of Political Economy. ”

“ Having explained the distinction between a science and an art, and the chief differences between the arts and sciences which consider as their principal subject the laws of matter, and those whose principal subject is mind, I now come to one of the practical questions in which this long preface will I hope be found useful, namely, whether Political Economy be a mental or a physical study. ”

“ To ascertain the character and the extent of these effects, even as to any existing tax, without the aid of the general principles supplied by Political Economy, is scarcely practicable: to foretell or even to conjecture, with probability, the effects of an untried tax, without such aid, is impossible. A government ignorant of the nature of wealth, or of the laws which regulate its production and distribution, resembles a surgeon who has not studied anatomy, or a judge unacquainted with law. ”

“ If the teacher of Political Economy has not decided whether he is engaged on a science or on an art, whether it is his duty to explain phenomena or to deliver precepts, whether his principal business is to observe facts or to deduce inferences, whether his premises are all physical truths or depend partly on arbitrary assumption,—his work, though it may contain partial views of the highest value, cannot possibly form a clear or a consistent whole. ”

“ The things which it excludes are mere objects of the intellect. They may be shared, but cannot be completely transferred, since the proprietor, though he may impart them, cannot divest himself of them; they may produce permanent effects, but perish themselves [75] with the individual mind of which they are qualities. But as they obey, in other respects, the same laws as material wealth, are obtained by the same means, and owe their value to the same causes, I think their exclusion a fatal objection to a definition of wealth. ”

“ We can approach the brink of an unprotected precipice and look down. We can interpose between our bodies and that brink a low parapet, and look over it. And if we find that our emotions in the two cases differ,—that though there is no real danger in either case, though in both our judgment equally tells us that we are safe, yet that the apparent danger in the one produces fear, while we feel secure in the other,—we infer that the imagination can excite fear for which the judgment affirms that there is no adequate cause. ”

“ I think, therefore, that I may venture to say, that no study ever attracted, during an equal period, so much attention from so many minds, as has been bestowed, during the last sixty years, on Political Economy. I do not mean that this attention was acknowledged, or even that all those who have been framing and repeating theories respecting the modes in which wealth is created, increased, or diminished, have been aware that they were political economists. ”

“ In the British Islands self-government was no novelty, but many circumstances concurred to increase and diffuse the interest taken in public affairs. Among these circumstances the principal ones were the extension of the public expenditure, the alterations in the currency, and the effects of the poor laws. In no extensive empire recorded in history, has so large a portion of the annual produce of the land, labour, and capital of the people, been administered by the state. Every man felt himself to be a public debtor, and almost every man became, in some shape or other, a public creditor. ”

“ The possession of wealth is the great object of human desire, its production is the great purpose of human exertion. The modes and the degree in which it is distributed, accumulated, and consumed, occasion the principal differences between nations. The philosopher who could teach such an art, would stand at the head of the benefactors of mankind. ”

“ Political Economy considers mankind as occupied solely in acquiring and consuming wealth, and aims at showing what is the course of action into which mankind, living in a state of society, would be impelled, if that motive, except in the degree in which it is checked by the two perpetual counter-motives above adverted to, were absolutely ruler of all their actions. Under the influence of this desire, it shows mankind accumulating wealth, and employing wealth in the production of other wealth ”

“ If the main subject of his studies were the physical phenomena attending the production of wealth, a system of Political Economy must contain a treatise on mechanics, on navigation, on agriculture, on chemistry—in fact, on the subjects of almost all the physical sciences and arts, for there are few of those arts or sciences which are not subservient to wealth. ”

“ They are unconnected with any science but his own. On the other hand, morality is not a science but an art. The object of the moralist is not to inform us as to the nature of the faculties and the sensations of man, but to advise us how to use those faculties, and how to subject ourselves to those sensations, for the purpose of promoting our happiness. He must therefore draw his materials from many different sciences, and must vary his precepts according to the social condition of those whom he addresses. ”

“ No one would call rhetoric a physical art, though its teacher must deliver precepts as to voice and gesture. No one would call agriculture a mental art, though a treatise on agriculture would be incomplete which did not compare the advantages and disadvantages of task-work and day-work,—a comparison involving wide and numerous moral considerations. ”

“ It is a complete answer to any one who should maintain either that a country in which the population are forced to rely for subsistence on their own resources will necessarily be laborious, or that one in which the law protects every one, whatever be his conduct, from want, will necessarily be indolent. But it is no answer to any one who should maintain that such are the tendencies of the two opposite institutions, but that such tendencies may be neutralised by counteracting causes. ”

“ The moment the consumption begins, the balance turns. Nations which trade to India by sending out gold and silver for a return of superfluities of a most consumable nature, the consumption of which they prohibit at home, do not spend their own specie, but that of their neighbours, who purchase the returns of it for their own consumption. Consequently a nation may become immensely rich by the constant exportation of specie and importation of consumable commodities. ”

“ In all sciences and in all arts these sources are but three—observation, consciousness, and hypothesis. The physical sciences, being only secondarily conversant with mind, draw their premises almost exclusively from observation or hypothesis. Those which treat only of magnitude and number, or, as they are usually called, the pure sciences, draw them altogether from hypothesis. The mathematician does not measure the radii of a circle in order to ascertain that they are all equal: he infers their equality from the definition with which he sets out. ”

“ The science then proceeds to investigate the laws which govern these several operations, under the supposition that man is a being who is determined, by the necessity of his nature, to prefer a greater proportion of wealth to a smaller in all cases, without any other exception than that constituted by the two counter-motives already specified. Not that any political economist was ever so absurd as to suppose that mankind are really thus constituted, but because this is the mode in which science must necessarily proceed. ”

“ He considered it as an art. “Political Economy,” he says, in the introduction to the fourth book, “proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or, more properly, to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and, secondly, to supply the state or common weal with a revenue sufficient for the public service. It proposes [43] to enrich both the people and the sovereign.” ”