DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22140#0204
iSS INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL HISTORY.
one of the keenest observers in the eighteenth century. I cannot
recommend his history or his poetry, but his novels are excellent
pictures of eighteenth-century life, and his letters are full of
information.
Now the economists discovered and announced one economical
truth of the greatest importance. It is that the existence of every
class of persons, artisans, in the ordinary sense of the word, men
of leisure, men of science, men of religion, men engaged in war-
fare and in the arts, and the dependents and domestics of these
people, depended on the extent to which the products of agricul-
ture were in excess of what was needed for the maintenance of the
agriculturist, and for the continuity of his calling. On this foun-
dation, as they saw clearly, rested the whole of the social structure.
If it failed, the whole which was above it vanished into nothing-
ness. It was plain, then, that what impoverished the peasant
threatened mischief to the nation, and I need not say that in the
existing state of trade and transport, almost the sole reliance for
everything beyond the maintenance of the peasant lay in the
efficiency of the peasant's labour and the abundance of his crops.
To these men, therefore, agriculture was as sacred as it was to
Cato and to Cicero. Perhaps the views which they entertained were
as cordially acknowledged by the public men at the time, who had
as abstract a respect for agriculture as Cicero had, and as practical
a dislike to any change which could alone make agriculture effec-
tive. Unfortunately, too, the Economists of the eighteenth century,
after grasping this and a few co-ordinate economical truths,
wandered off, as economists have always been apt to do, into
metaphysics.
The agricultural system of the French Economists is expounded
and criticized by Adam Smith in the ninth chapter of his fourth
book. I do not know whether, in this age of experimental study,
you are advised to read Adam Smith, or are counselled to master
authors who know but little of the errors committed in past times,
and have but little insight into 1 the errors of the time or the
country in which they live. But I can assure you that in my
opinion, whatever that may be worth, Adam Smith is much more
frequently in the right than his commentators and critics are, and
that, in particular, he had the advantage of a just and unprejudiced
one of the keenest observers in the eighteenth century. I cannot
recommend his history or his poetry, but his novels are excellent
pictures of eighteenth-century life, and his letters are full of
information.
Now the economists discovered and announced one economical
truth of the greatest importance. It is that the existence of every
class of persons, artisans, in the ordinary sense of the word, men
of leisure, men of science, men of religion, men engaged in war-
fare and in the arts, and the dependents and domestics of these
people, depended on the extent to which the products of agricul-
ture were in excess of what was needed for the maintenance of the
agriculturist, and for the continuity of his calling. On this foun-
dation, as they saw clearly, rested the whole of the social structure.
If it failed, the whole which was above it vanished into nothing-
ness. It was plain, then, that what impoverished the peasant
threatened mischief to the nation, and I need not say that in the
existing state of trade and transport, almost the sole reliance for
everything beyond the maintenance of the peasant lay in the
efficiency of the peasant's labour and the abundance of his crops.
To these men, therefore, agriculture was as sacred as it was to
Cato and to Cicero. Perhaps the views which they entertained were
as cordially acknowledged by the public men at the time, who had
as abstract a respect for agriculture as Cicero had, and as practical
a dislike to any change which could alone make agriculture effec-
tive. Unfortunately, too, the Economists of the eighteenth century,
after grasping this and a few co-ordinate economical truths,
wandered off, as economists have always been apt to do, into
metaphysics.
The agricultural system of the French Economists is expounded
and criticized by Adam Smith in the ninth chapter of his fourth
book. I do not know whether, in this age of experimental study,
you are advised to read Adam Smith, or are counselled to master
authors who know but little of the errors committed in past times,
and have but little insight into 1 the errors of the time or the
country in which they live. But I can assure you that in my
opinion, whatever that may be worth, Adam Smith is much more
frequently in the right than his commentators and critics are, and
that, in particular, he had the advantage of a just and unprejudiced