CHAPTER
I (Part 1)
ECONOMICS
AND ETHICS
“It
is surely a sad symptom for a science, when, in developing itself
according to its own principles, it reaches its object just in time
to be contradicted by another; as for example: when the postulates of
political economy
are found to be opposed to those of morality, for I suppose morality
is a science as well as political economy. What, then, is human
knowledge, if all its affirmations destroy each other, and on what
shall we rely?”
— System of Economical Contradictions: Proudhon.
“That
which is altogether just shalt thou follow, that thou mayest live and
inherit the land.” — Deuteronomy XVI : 20.
“In
proceeding towards any given point, there is always one line which is
the shortest — the straight; so in the conduct of human affairs
there is always one course which is best — the just.” -
Macaulay's Essay on Lord Bacon.
Modern
civilization, which, as we are taught to believe, transcends that of
any period in the world's history, may be said to be entirely the
result of modern scientific thought. Nothing serves to illustrate so
well the difference between the civilization of ancient Greece, for
instance, and our own, as to compare the mental attitude of the
Platonists toward the sciences, with that of the nineteenth century
philosophers. By the former science
was studied not for the purpose of adding to the material comforts of
life, nor to satisfy the vulgar appetites or wants of man, but to
exalt the mind
to the contemplation of " pure truth " and of things "
which are to be perceived by the intellect alone." To bring
science to the aid of manufacture was supposed to degrade what was
regarded as a purely intellectual pursuit. Inventions were despised
as being beneath the dignity of
philosophy and fit only for craftsmen. Hence we learn that Archytas,
who " had framed machines of extraordinary power on mathematical principles,"
was persuaded by his friend Plato to abandon mechanics as unworthy
the attention of a philosopher. So we read that Archimedes considered
geometry degraded by being employed in the production of anything
useful, and "was half ashamed of those inventions that were the
wonder of hostile nations."
The
high esteem in which science to-day is held is wholly on account of
what the ancients termed its "vulgar utility." We prize
mathematics, not because it leads to the contemplation of "the
immutable essence of things," but because It enables us to solve
problems connected with the industrial arts and the ordinary affairs
of life; so, too, with all other sciences. The age of speculation
has given place to the age of practice. What to the ancients was the
end of learning, viz : cultivation of the intellect and strengthening
of the memory, is to us but a means to an end, and that end is human
happiness.
In
judging the merits of any science, we are accustomed to inquire "What
is its use." "To what purpose is it applicable?" And
our respect for it depends upon its demonstrated utility. Take for
instance the science of ethics. In furnishing a basis for conduct,
principles for right guidance and an ideal standard toward which
humanity should ever aspire, the utility of this system of knowledge
becomes apparent.
Of
modern sciences none stands generally more discredited, nor have the
claims of any system of knowledge to rank as science been more persistently
opposed than political economy. Transcendently important to human
life as are the phenomena with which it deals, it is questionable whether
any branch of knowledge is less understood, or commands so little
respect as this one.
(After
enumerating certain reforms that political economy has effected,
Walter Bagehot, the author of several well-known economical works,
says: "Notwithstanding these triumphs, the position of our
political economy is not altogether satisfactory. It lies rather dead
in the public mind. Not only it does not excite the same interest,
but there is not exactly the same confidence in it. Younger men
either do not study it, or do not feel that it comes
home to them, and that it matches with their living ideas. They ask
often, hardly knowing it, will this 'science,' as it claims to be,
harmonize with what we now know to be science, or bear to be tried as
we now try science? And they are not sure of the answer.")
Nor
shall we be greatly surprised at this if we examine its doctrines in
the light of existing science.
For
many years past the civilized world has been confronted with problems
which it is the professed aim of political economy to solve. But what
do we find? Nothing but discord, disagreement and uncertainty among
its doctors.
('Every
country," says S. Laing, “'has a political economy of its
own.")
The
diagnoses of its various schools are contradictory. One school tells
us the cause of industrial crises is " over-production;"
another "under-consumption;" another says it is due to the
credit system, whilst another holds the tariff responsible. Their
prescriptions are found to be similarly antagonistic. One class
prescribes greater freedom of trade, another greater restriction.
This professor suggests the free coinage of silver, and that one
denounces it. With such diversity of opinion we can hardly wonder
that the science stands in such bad repute.
Notwithstanding
the diversity of schools and opinions, not one has yet provided a
scientific solution of the economic troubles now afflicting the
industrial and financial world. To thoroughly appreciate the
condition of economics, we have only to imagine a similar condition
existing in those sciences which command our implicit faith and
reliance. Suppose every bridge constructed according to recognized
mechanical principles collapsed after a few years of ordinary
traffic, or every boiler built upon so-called scientific
rules should explode as soon as it was subjected to the required
steam pressure, or every patient treated according to the
Homoeopathic School of Medicine should die, in what light should we
regard these sciences?
Political
economy deals with the production and distribution of wealth, and its
main object is to discover those laws and principles, guidance by
which will tend to the material well-being and prosperity of the
human race. "Considered as a branch of the science of a
statesman or legislator, political economy," says Adam Smith
(1723-1790, author of Wealth of Nations (1776)),
"proposes two distinct objects: First, to supply a plentiful
subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to
provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; secondly to
supply the State or Commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the
public services. It proposes to enrich, both the people and the
sovereign." We may dispute this, at least the last part,
but for the time being will let it stand.
"How
happens it then," asks Proudhon, "that in spite of so many
miracles of industry, science and art, comfort and culture have not
become the inheritance
of all? How happens it that in Paris and London, centres of social
wealth, poverty is as hideous as in the days of Caesar and Agricola?"
Look,
for instance, at the condition of the wealthiest nation on earth, —
England. Here — the birthplace of political economy — statesmen
and legislators
have been largely guided by its teachings. It is said that the
"Wealth of Nations" (Adam
Smith's book) revolutionized the opinions of
England's ministers and caused them to enter upon a new policy in accordance
with the doctrines propounded by the great English economist. Clubs
were formed for the study of economic questions, and statesmen vied
with each other in seeking to bring the commercial laws of England in
conformity with those of the new science. After fifty years of this
experience what do we find? According to the judgement of one
England's foremost statesmen and economists, the great work of
political economy has been achieved.
"The
controversies which we now have in political economy," said the
Rt. Hon. Robert Lowe, "although they offer a capital exercise
for the logical faculties, are not of the same thrilling importance
as those of earlier days. The great work has been done."
Let
us now look at the results. Bearing in mind that the object of the science is " to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the
people, and supply the State with a revenue sufficient for the public
service,*' let us take a brief survey of "the great work"
that Robert Lowe said "has been done."
"In
the wealthiest nation in the world," says John Rae, "every
twentieth inhabitant is a pauper; one-fifth of the community is
insufficiently clad; the agricultural labourers and large classes of
working people in towns are too poorly fed to save them from what are
known as starvation diseases; the great proportion of our population
lead a life of monotonous, incessant toil, with no prospect in old
age but penury and parochial support; and one-third, if not indeed
one-half of the families of the country are huddled six in a room, in
a way quite incompatible with the elementary claims of decency,
health or morality."
"Our
exports during the past quarter of a century," writes Professor
Fawcett, "have advanced from £60 million to more than £2SO
million, and our imports have increased to a still greater amount;
yet, incredible as it may on first consideration appear, it can, I
believe, be proved that whilst there has been this unprecedented
increase of wealth, the remuneration of labour has in many instances
scarcely advanced at all."
Speaking
of the industrial condition of Scotland's greatest city, Matthew
Arnold says: "Who that has seen it can ever forget the hardly
human horror,
the abjection and uncivilisedness of Glasgow?” "Nothing is
more certain," writes Professor (John
Elliott) Cairnes (1823-1875),
"than that, taking the whole field of labour, real wages in
Great Britain will never rise to the standard of remuneration now
prevailing in new countries, a standard which, after all, would form
but a sorry consummation as a final goal of improvement for the
masses of mankind. . . . The exertion of labour and capital produce
is, lo, 20 or 100 times more than it did 100 years ago. Yet wages
have not increased in any such ratio, and it is even questionable
whether profits have risen. . . . The large addition to the wealth of
the country has gone neither to profit nor to wages, nor yet to the
public at large, but to swell a fund ever growing, even while its
proprietors sleep — the rent-roll of the owners of the soil."
Here
it is apparent that political economy has failed to achieve what its
chief apostle designated to be its special mission, nor do we find in
turning to other nations with their several schools a much better
state of things. “Any one," writes Prof. (Thomas Henry)
Huxley (1825-1895),
in his "Social Diseases and Worse Remedies," "who is
acquainted with the state of the population of all great industrial
centres, whether in this or other countries, is aware that amidst a
large and increasing body of that population, la
misere reigns supreme. I have no
pretensions to the character of a philanthropist, and I have a
special horror of all sorts of sentimental rhetoric; I am merely
trying to deal with facts, to some extent within my own knowledge,
and further evidenced by abundant testimony, as a naturalist; and I
take it to be a mere plain truth that throughout industrial Europe
there is not a single large manufacturing city which is free from a
vast mass of people whose condition is exactly that described, and
from a still greater mass who, living just on the edge of the social
swamp, are liable to be precipitated into it by any lack of demand
for their produce. And with every addition to the population, the
multitude already sunk
in the pit, and the number of the host sliding towards it,
continually increase.”
"In
the United States,” says a well-known author, (Henry George
1839-1897, in “Progress and Poverty.") "squalor
and misery and the vices and crimes
that spring from them, everywhere increase as the village grows to
the city, and the march of development brings the advantages of the
improved methods of production and exchange. It is in the older and
richer sections of the Union that pauperism and distress among the
working classes are becoming most painfully apparent."
"I
have been told," says a clergyman (Rev. Mr. Cawardine, Methodist
minister at Pullman) who witnessed the recent great railroad strike,
"that the average wages paid by the Pullman Company are $1.87
per day. I doubt it much. It is claimed that the men are not
receiving 'starvation wages.'
I know many of which this is true, but they are the exception and
not the rule. I know a man who has had, after paying $14.50 rent for
four small rooms and seventy-one cents for water rent, but
seventy-six cents a day left to feed and clothe his wife and
children. When we remember that this is an average case, that it is
on the basis of full time, then in the name of all that is just and
right, I say God help that man if his dependents be many or if
sickness invade his home."
This
is a description of what exists in America's so-called "model
town." "It is," says the same gentleman, "a
civilized relic of old-world serfdom. Today we behold the lamentable
and logical outcome of the whole system."
During
the recent great coal miners' strike throughout this country the
following press despatch appeared in all the newspapers: "I have
never seen such a discouraged set of men as the miners of this
neighbourhood have been since the last reduction was made. They know
it matters not how steady they work, they cannot make enough money to
keep a small-sized family in the necessary food, and they have
concluded that if they have to starve, they prefer doing it at once
and not by degrees.”
Here
in the two wealthiest and most civilized nations on earth, we find
labour leading a miserable existence, in a chronic state of warfare
against capital, and periodically striking for "living” wages.
Under the regime of this so-called science, society presents us with
the two extremes of vast wealth
and wretched poverty side by side; of the wealth-producer doomed to a
poor existence, and the non-producer born to a life of luxury. With
such results drawn from experience, what other judgement can we
pronounce upon a system which works out so differently from what is
desired, than that of being false and unscientific? What faith can
we place in a science the object of which is "to enrich both the
people and the sovereign,”
that fails so completely in its main object? Even to the
statists who happen to be reading this, certainly the so called
“science” of economics has failed to prevent even “sovereign”
states from becoming perpetual debt burdens of their citizens. We're
nearly 120 years after this was written, so not a thing has changed!
But
the question arises, "Have the principles of political economy
had free play in any industrial community where poverty still
exists?" "Have those nations in which poverty progresses
with wealth been governed by its principles?" The patient who
neglects to follow his physician's advice cannot justly hold him
responsible for failure to regain health. So far as England and the
United States are concerned there can be little doubt but that in all
essentials the laws of each nation have been, in the main, favourable
to the workings of its respective school — schools which, while
differing in matters pertaining to foreign trade, agree in almost
every other branch. Indeed, orthodox political economy is founded
upon certain legalized institutions, which have been handed down from
medieval times. Its fundamental assumptions recognize so-called
"private rights," which governments of all nations have
built up and strengthened. It is founded in a large measure upon the
principles recognized by juris-prudence — better named
"juris-ignorance." There can be no question that the
production of wealth during the past century has been enormously in
excess of any, within a similar period, that the world has ever
known. But with the production of wealth, economics has had
comparatively little to do. This growth of production has been due
to invention, discovery, and the physical sciences. It is with the
distribution of wealth the science is chiefly employed, and it is in
this particular where it has failed. In each country we find wealth
distributed amongst the so-called three factors, in rent, interest
and wages, according to the laws governing these respective institutions.
We find supply and demand governing the prices of all commodities,
even the factors themselves. Exchange is carried on by the methods
and rules approved by leading economists. Money is regarded by
merchants in the same light as the highest authority on finance
regards it, and gold has become — thanks to economists and
legislators — the universal basis for currency. The doctrines of
Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) are
found to work like a charm, and the man for whom capital has no
employment, finds no plate set for him at nature's banquet. In our
dealings with each other we have imbibed the supreme principle of
political economy — selfishness please recall this blog's
precise definition, and the three cardinal
virtues and our precise definition for virtue as well,
abstention, deception and avarice are universally practised.
So
closely has the fundamental law of this science — to gratify one's
desires with the least expenditure of energy — been followed, that
a large percentage
of the race have devised schemes for living without the expenditure
of any energy at all — on their part. We have acquired not only
the art of buying in the cheapest, and selling in the dearest
markets, but modern ingenuity has discovered a plan for controlling
the markets themselves, thus making goods cheap or dear at pleasure.
In
conformity with economic teachings we have abolished the duty of alms
giving — a system which served to mitigate to a considerable extent
the miseries
to which the labouring classes were exposed during medieval times —
and have enacted tramp and vagrancy laws, thus making poverty a crime.
We have learned to treat labour absolutely as a commodity and have
made it entirely subservient to the laws of supply and demand,
notwithstanding our high pretensions regarding the immorality of
slavery. In short, our modern commercial and industrial system seems
to conform entirely
to the principles and teachings of orthodox economists. So far,
then, it is fair to say that the principles of political economy have
had reasonably
free play in the countries we have been considering, and therefore we
are warranted in passing judgement upon the system which bears such
fruit. But it will be contended that though conditions are bad, they
are better than they were and are continually improving; that
although labour is admittedly in a "dim-eyed, narrow-chested
condition," it is slowly but surely gaining in health and
happiness.
For
instance, we are told by an optimistic economist, Mr. W. H. Mallock,
1849-1923 that "the poorer classes as a
body have advanced and are advancing enormously.” Another writer
informs us that the pauper of today enjoys comforts and privileges
unknown to even the nobility of a few centuries ago. As though the
privilege of looking through a pane of glass, or walking an
electric-lighted, well paved street, could assuage the pangs of
hunger or protect one from the icy blasts of a winter's storm!
Against the statements of Mr. Mallock, however, we have that of Prof.
Thorold Rogers 1823-1890: “I have
protested against that complaisant optimism which concludes because
the health of the upper classes has been greatly improved, because
that of the working classes has been bettered, and appliances unknown
before have become familiar and cheap, that therefore the country in
which these improvements have been effected must be considered to
have made for all its people regular and continuous progress."
And again, " relatively speaking, the working man of today is
not so well off as he was in the 15th century." He adds, "the
freedom of the few was bought by the servitude of the many."!
We
have also the statements of both Professors Fawcett and Cairnes
before quoted. We have likewise the evidence gained from experience
in all
new countries of the inevitable growth of poverty with the progress
of wealth, as demonstrated by Mr. Henry George in his "Progress
and Poverty." But outside of any opinion, the fact remains that
after a century's unprecedented growth of wealth, the one human
factor in production still remains as a class, within sight of
starvation, and unable to face, unaided, what are known as "hard
times.” In short, so far as enabling the majority of people to
provide themselves with a plentiful subsistence is concerned, political
economy has been an ignominious failure. Keynesians,
socialists and other so called “liberals” after nearly 120 years
cannot argue sufficiently otherwise, either.
Passing
from the condition of society to the particular phenomena with which
it should deal, we find the science confronted with problems which it
has thus far been powerless to answer. For instance, those regularly
recurring decennial crises with which we are so familiar, we find
economists regarding "with the same passive emotions of wonder
and submission, with which in the material world we survey the
effects produced by the mysterious and uncontrollable operation of
physical causes."
(Dugald Stewart 1753-1828) Passing
within the realm of the science itself, we find it affording far
greater cause for wonder and amazement than food for instruction.
Starting originally with the intention of discovering laws by which
the greatest amount of wealth can be produced and enjoyed by society,
it concludes by showing how wealth can best be conserved by
controlling and limiting the production of human beings. The
problems which it originally propounded have become inverted.
Acquisition of the means of wealth-production is set forth as the end
of social existence. Instead of wealth being produced for the
benefit of mankind, the right to life, by the majority of beings, is
regarded solely from the standpoint of their ability to create
wealth, whilst often this right is denied. Listen to the following
passage from Malthus:
“A
man who is born into a world already occupied, his family unable to
support him, and society not requiring his labour, such a man, I say,
has not the
least right to claim any nourishment whatever; he is really one too
many on the earth. At the great banquet of nature there is no plate
laid for
him. Nature commands him to take himself away, and she will not be
slow to put her order into execution." (I have quoted this
passage from Ben R. Tucker's translation of Proudhon's “Economical
Contradictions," as I have not the original work itself. The
words may not be identically those used by Malthus, but the sense is
the same. — AK)
The
least intelligent person can hardly fail to perceive that under those
laws which economists declare essential to social progress,
nine-tenths of the
people are the servants or slaves of the other tenth, whilst the
whole of society is dominated by and subordinated to the things it
produces. Instead of labour employing capital (i. e. human beings
employing their own productions) we find capital employing labour.
"Although
labour is the starting point in production," writes Prof. Jevons
(Theory of Political Economy), “and the interests of the labourer
the very subject of the science, yet economists do not progress far
before they suddenly turn around and treat labour as a commodity
which is bought up by capitalists. Labour becomes itself the object
of the laws of supply and demand, instead of those laws acting in the
distribution of the products of labour. Economists have invented,
too, a very simple theory to determine the
rate at which capital can buy up labour. The average rate of wages,
they say, is found by dividing the whole amount of capital
appropriated to the payment of wages, by the number of the labourers
paid; and they wish us to believe that this settles the question."
In
the branch known as exchange we find the same remarkable inversion of
the natural order of things. The mechanism for distributing wealth
has become the highest form of wealth. Money, instead of remaining
the medium or tool of exchange, has become its ultimate object, and
commodities, although produced for consumption, are regarded mainly
from the standpoint of their ability to produce that which should function
solely as a means for exchanging them. In place of finance serving
industry we find industry the slave of finance. The end sought by
the wealth-producer has come to be recognized as work. Universally
good harvests and general increase in production and manufactures are
regarded with dismay by producers as leading to overproduction and
consequent starvation, whilst a wholesale destruction of wealth by
fire, flood or war
is hailed as a boon to the masses. We continue
to insist that anyone using the term “the masses” in any way
whatsoever, is suggesting that he or she is standing at a higher
perspective relative to all others from which they can look down upon
and call down upon other people or otherwise use their, thought to be
exalted, position as an “argument from authority” which must
always be false, since it begs the question, from whence does one
ultimately derive the right to such authority or would be oppression
of others? No matter how humble the speaker might claim to be, the
use of the term “the masses” for “the people” is usually a
dead giveaway that someone thinks too highly of themselves.
(Since
writing the above, I cut the following from the Philadelphia
Inquirer, Aug. 6th, 1894: “The reports of serious damage to the
corn crop have advanced the price of that grain five cents a bushel,
making an advance of eight
cents in two weeks. The grain is now seven cents a bushel higher than
at this time last year; and yet it does not appear that the crop will
be any less in 1894 than it was in 1893. The higher price at which
the grain is now
quoted thus means prosperity to a very large and important consuming
element in the population.”)
In
fact, regarded from a rational standpoint, the whole commercial and
industrial world appears to be standing upon its head.
The
present science of economics is made up of antinomies. Whilst
recognizing wealth as essential to social life, it demonstrates that
the conditions favourable to its growth do not conduce to social
health. The laws that lead to wealth production lead to starvation.
Overproduction and want
go hand in hand. The self-same laws that govern distribution of the
means of existence, are continually urging man towards destruction.
Life and death are inextricably mixed up in all its prescriptions.
The
original problem was " How can wealth be controlled to serve the
best interests of society?” Today the problem is " How can
nine-tenths of society
be controlled to serve the interests of existing wealth?"
Viewing
it from an ethical standpoint we shall find still further grounds for
astonishment. "Political economy generally," says Prof.
William Smart 1853-1915,
"is based on the analysis of economic conduct." Yet we
find economic conduct to be utterly irreconcilable with any standard
of right conduct. Not only so, but economists have not hesitated to
proclaim economics and ethics as irreconcilable. "Moral
considerations have nothing to do with political economy.” says
John Stuart Mill 1806-1873. "The
economic 'want' is not necessarily a rational or a healthy want,"
says Prof. Smart.
Prof.
Cairnes writes: "I am unaware of any rule of justice applicable
to the problem of distributing the products of industry; and any
attempt to give effect to what are considered the dictates of
justice, which should involve as a means towards that end, a
disturbance of the fundamental assumptions on which economic
reasoning Is based, more especially those of the right of private
property and the freedom of individual industry, would,
in my opinion, putting all other than material considerations aside,
be inevitably followed by the destruction or indefinite curtailment
of the fund
itself, from which the remuneration of all classes is derived."
He adds, "As to the amount of truth or morality which these
several maxims of political economy embody, I am not concerned here
to inquire. My business with them has reference exclusively to their
efficacy as rules for regulating the production and distribution of
wealth."
As
well might the navigator say, "As to the correctness or
incorrectness of the ship's compass, I am not concerned to inquire.
My business is simply to sail the ship."
So
the metaphysician might say, "As to the truth or correctness of
my premises, I am not concerned to inquire. My business with them is simply
to arrive at logical conclusions."
I
confess that there is, to my mind, something amazing in these frank
statements of Mill and Cairnes. How they could presume to suppose they
were building a science governing human actions — for the
production and distribution of wealth is entirely regulated by human
actions — without any regard to that science which governs right
conduct, is to me inexplicable.
With
Proudhon, we may remark that "It is surely a sad symptom for a
science, when, in developing itself according to its own principles
it reaches
its object just in time to be contradicted by another." (System
of Economical Contradictions)
We
now pass to a consideration of the premises upon which the science is
built. Economists assert that wealth is the resultant of three
factors: land, labour and capital. Allowing, for a moment, the
assertion, we must recognize that this classification places all
human exertion under one heading, viz : labour. Hence there is but
one human factor in production; and since, in order to maintain and
properly develop them, the factors must be properly nourished and
replenished from wealth produced, in the absence of anything to the
contrary, reason would suggest that all wealth should be divided
among them in proportion to their needs. That is, that the land
should be properly fertilized and irrigated, capital replenished and
the balance should go to labour. This would seem to harmonize with
the principles of ethics. To parody a political adage we may justly
say "to the factors belong the spoils."
But
what do economists say? "The products of industry” say they,
"are divided into three parts. One part goes for use of land
and is termed rent; another to labour and is called wages; and
another to capital and is known as interest." Instead of rent
going to land, then, it goes to a landlord, and interest is similarly
paid to a capitalist. But to what purpose are these portions of
wealth, which are paid to landlords and capitalists, applied? To
fertilizing land and repairing capital? Not necessarily. The main
disposition of this wealth is used to support the landlords and
capitalists themselves, rather than maintain the factors that they
justly or unjustly represent. With
this question, however, economists do not bother themselves. There
is here, evidently, some gross error, something entirely misleading
and wholly
unscientific. Beginning with three factors in production, one of
which is human, economists end by distributing wealth among three
factors, all of which are human. As factors in production, landlords
and capitalists do not appear. On what basis, then, do they appear
as factors in distribution? “Rent," they say, "is for
the use of land." Now the natural payment to land for its use
is labour. There is no just reason to exact payment for use unless
the thing is used. To use land is to work upon it — to labour.
Without such labour there can be no return, for nature gives only to
labour; hence, the payment nature demands is labour. To use is to
employ, and to say that land is an agent in production, and the use
of land an
agent, is one and the same thing. In other words, land as a factor
necessarily means its use, and the natural and only just payment for
use is labour.
Labour is, in fact, nature's rent, and this is the only form of rent
that is just. To pay rent to a landlord, therefore, means a double
tribute, a natural
and an unnatural one. But land is nature's product, and her rent
there is not the slightest possibility of evading. What part then
does the landlord
furnish? Where is his quid pro quo? To these questions
political economy gives but evasive answers; and yet, if it be a
science it must answer
them, and answer satisfactorily.
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