CHAPTER XXIII.

POLITICAL ECONOMY AS AN INDUCTIVE SCIENCE.

(_Moral Sciences._)--1. Both M. Comte and Mr. Mill, in speaking of the methods of advancing science, aim, as I have said, at the extension of their methods to moral subjects, and aspire to suggest means for the augmentation of our knowledge of ethical, political, and social truths. I have not here ventured upon a like extension of my conclusions, because I wished to confine my views of the philosophy of discovery to the cases in which all allow that solid and permanent discoveries have been made. Moreover in the case of moral speculations, we have to consider not only observed external facts and the ideas by which they are colligated, but also internal facts, in which the instrument of observation is consciousness, and in which observations and ideas are mingled together, and act and react in a peculiar manner. It may therefore be doubted whether the methods which have been effectual in the discovery of physical theories will not require to be greatly modified, or replaced by processes altogether different, when we would make advances in ethical, political, or social knowledge. In ethics, at least, it seems plain that we must take our starting-point not without but within us. Our mental powers, our affections, our reason, and any other faculties which we have, must be the basis of our convictions. And in this field of knowledge, the very form of our highest propositions is different from what it is in the physical sciences. In Physics we examine what _is_, in a form more or less general: in Ethics we seek to determine what OUGHT _to be_, as the highest rule, which is supreme over all others. In this case we cannot expect the methods of physical discovery to aid us.

But others of the subjects which I have mentioned, though strongly marked and influenced by this ethical element, are still of a mixed character, and require also observation of external facts of human, individual, and social conduct, and generalizations derived from such observations. The facts of political constitutions and social relations in communities of men, and the histories of such communities, afford large bodies of materials for political and social science; and it seems not at all unlikely that such science may be governed, in its formation and progress, by laws like those which govern the physical sciences, and may be steered clear of errors and directed towards truths by an attention to the forms which error and truth have assumed in the most stable and certain sciences. The different forms of society, and the principal motives which operate upon men regarded in masses, may be classified as facts; and though our consciousness of what we ourselves are and the affections which we ourselves feel are always at work in our interpretations of such facts, yet the knowledge which we thus obtain may lead us to bodies of knowledge which we may call _Sciences_, and compare with the other sciences as to their form and maxims.

(_Political Economy._)--2. Among such bodies of knowledge, I may notice as a specimen, the science of _Political Economy_, and may compare it with other sciences in the respects which have been referred to.

M. Comte has given a few pages to the discussion of this science of Political Economy[291]; but what he has said amounts only to a few vague remarks on Adam Smith and Destutt de Tracy; his main object being, it would seem, to introduce his usual formula, and to condemn all that has hitherto been done (with which there is no evidence that he is adequately acquainted) as worthless, because it is "theological," "metaphysical," "literary," and not "_positive_."

Mr. Mill has much more distinctly characterized the plan and form of Political Economy in his system[292]. He regards this science as that which deals with the results which take place in human society in consequence of the desire of wealth. He explains, however, that it is only for the sake of convenience that one of the motives which operate upon man is thus insulated and treated as if it were the only one:--that there are other principles, for instance, the principles on which the progress of population depends, which co-operate with the main principle, and materially modify its results: and he gives reasons why this mode of simplifying the study of social phenomena tends to promote the progress of systematic knowledge.

Instead of discussing these reasons, I will notice the way in which the speculations of political economists have exemplified tendencies to error, and corrections of those tendencies, of the same nature as those which we have already noticed in speaking of other sciences.

(_Wages, Profits, and Rent._)--3. We may regard as one of the first important steps in this science, Adam Smith's remark, that the value or price of any article bought and sold consists of three elements, _Wages_, _Profits_, and _Rent_. Some of the most important of subsequent speculations were attempts to determine the laws of each of these three elements. At first it might be supposed that there ought to be added to them a fourth element, _Materials_. But upon consideration it will be seen that materials, as an element of price, resolves itself into wages and rent; for all materials derive their value from the labour which is bestowed upon them. The iron of the ploughshare costs just what it costs to sink the mine, dig up and smelt the iron. The wood of the frame costs what it costs to cut down the tree, together with the rent of the ground on which it grows.

(_Premature Generalizations._)--4. But what determines Wages?--The amount of persons seeking work, that is, speaking loosely, the population; and the amount of money which is devoted to the payment of wages. And what determines the population? It was replied,--the means of subsistence. And how does the population tend to increase?--In a geometrical ratio. And how does the subsistence tend to increase?--At most in an arithmetical ratio. And hence it was inferred that the population tends constantly to run beyond the means of subsistence, and will be limited by a threatened deficiency of these means. And the wages paid must be such as to form this limit. And therefore the wages paid will always be such as just to keep up the population in its ordinary state of progress. Here was one general proposition which was gathered from summary observations of society.

Again: as to Rent: Adam Smith had treated Rent as if it were a monopoly price--the result of a monopoly of the land by the landowners. But subsequent writers acutely remarked that land is of various degrees of fertility, and there is some land which barely pays the cultivator, if cultivating it he pay no rent. And rent can be afforded for other land only in so far as it is better than this bad land. And thus, there was obtained another general proposition; that the Rent of good land was just equal to the excess of its produce over the worst cultivable land.

Now these two propositions are examples of a hasty and premature generalization, like that from which the sweeping physical systems of antiquity were derived. They were examples of that process which Francis Bacon calls _anticipation_; in which we leap at once from a few facts to propositions of the highest generality; and supposing these to be securely established, proceed to draw a body of conclusions from them, and thus frame a system.

And what is the sounder and wiser mode of proceeding in order to obtain a science of such things? We must classify the facts which we observe, and take care that we do not ascribe to the facts in our immediate neighbourhood or specially under our notice, a generality of prevalence which does not belong to them. We must proceed by the ladder of Induction, and be sure we have obtained the narrower generalizations, before we aspire to the widest.

(_Correction of them by Induction. Rent._)--5. For instance; in the case of the latter of the above two propositions--that Rent is the excess of the produce of good soils over the worst--that is the case in England and Scotland; but is it the case in other countries? Let us see. Why is it the case in England? Because if the rent demanded for good land were _more_ than the excess of the produce over bad land, the farmer would prefer the bad land as more gainful. If the rent demanded for good land were _less_ than the excess, the bad land would be abandoned by the farmer.

But all this goes upon the supposition that the farmer can remove from good land to bad, or from bad to good, or apply his capital in some other way than farming, according as it is more gainful. This is true in England; but is it true all over the world?

By no means. It is true in scarcely any other part of the world. In almost every other part of the world the cultivator is bound to the land, so that he cannot remove himself and his capital from it; and cannot, because he is not satisfied with his position upon it, seek and find a position and a subsistence elsewhere. On the contrary, he is bound by the laws and customs of the country, by constitution, history and character, so that he cannot, or can only with great difficulty, change his plan and mode of life. And thus over great part of the world the fundamental supposition on which rests the above generalization respecting Rent is altogether false.

An able political economist[293] has taken the step, which as we have said, sound philosophy would have prescribed: he has classified the states of society which exist or have existed on the earth, as they bear on this point, the amount of Rent. He has classified the modes in which the produce is, in different countries and different stages of society, divided between the cultivator and the proprietor: and he finds that the natural divisions are these:--_Serf Rents_, that is, labour rents paid by the Cultivator to the Landowner, as in Russia: _Métayer Rents_, where the produce is divided between the Cultivator and the Landowner, as in Central Europe: _Ryot Rents_, where a portion of the produce is paid to the Sovereign as Landlord, as in India: _Cottier Rents_, where a money-rent is paid by a Cultivator who raises his own subsistence from the soil; and _Farmers' Rents_, where a covenanted Rent is paid by a person employing labourers. In this last case alone is it true that the Rent is equal to the excess of good over bad soils.

The error of the conclusion, in this case, arises from assuming the mobility of capital and labour in cases in which it is not moveable: which is much as if mechanicians had reasoned respecting rigid bodies, supposing them to be fluid bodies.

But the error of method was in not classifying the facts of societies before jumping to a conclusion which was to be applicable to all societies.

(_Wages._)--6. And in like manner there is an error of the same kind in the assertion of the other general principles:--that wages are determined by the capital which is forthcoming for the payment of wages; and that population is determined in its progress by wages. For there is a vast mass of population on the surface of the earth which does not live upon wages: and though in England the greater part of the people lives upon wages, in the rest of the world the part that does so is small. And in this case, as in the other, we must class these facts as they exist in different nations, before we can make assertions of any wide generality.

Mr. Jones[294] classed the condition of labourers in different countries in the same inductive manner in which he classed the tenure of land. He pointed out that there are three broad distinct classes of them: _Unhired Labourers_, who cultivate the ground which they occupy, and live on _self-produced wages_; _Paid Dependants_, who are paid out of the _revenue_ or income of their employers, as the military retainers and domestic artizans of feudal times in Europe, and the greater part of the people of Asia at the present day; and _Hired Labourers_, who are paid wages from _capital_.

This last class, though taken as belonging to the normal condition of society by many political economists, is really the exceptional case, taking the world at large; and no propositions concerning the structure and relations of ranks in society can have any wide generality which are founded on a consideration of this case alone.

(_Population._)--7. And again: with regard to the proposition that the progress of population depends merely on the rate of wages, a very little observation of different communities, and of the same communities at different times, will show that this is a very rash and hasty generalization. When wages rise, whether or not population shall undergo a corresponding increase depends upon many other circumstances besides this single fact of the increase of wages. The effect of a rise of wages upon population is affected by the form of the wages, the time occupied by the change, the institutions of the society under consideration, and other causes: and a due classification of the conditions of the society according to these circumstances, is requisite in order to obtain any general proposition concerning the effect of a rise or fall of wages upon the progress of the population.

And thus those precepts of the philosophy of discovery which we have repeated so often, which are so simple, and which seem so obvious, have been neglected or violated in the outset of Political Economy as in so many other sciences:--namely, the precepts that we must classify our facts before we generalize, and seek for narrower generalizations and inductions before we aim at the widest. If these maxims had been obeyed, they would have saved the earlier speculators on this subject from some splendid errors; but, on the other hand, it may be said, that if these earlier speculators had not been thus bold, the science could not so soon have assumed that large and striking form which made it so attractive, and to which it probably owes a large part of its progress.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 291: _Phil. Pos._ t. iv. p. 264.]

[Footnote 292: _Logic_, b. vi. c. 3.]

[Footnote 293: Jones, _On Rent_, 1833.]

[Footnote 294: _Literary Remains_, 1859.]