and German fleets in European waters would give the British Navy ample occupation, for some time at all events; and, meanwhile, it is by no means certain-assuming the Russian Baltic Fleet to be still undefeated-that the French and German ships in the East would not counterbalance the British Pacific Squadron; in short, an Anglo-Japanese naval disaster is within the bounds of possibility. Needless to say, the Japanese armies in Manchuria would then be in a very dangerous situation.

Should the final result of the war be unfavorable to the AngloJapanese forces, it is easy to foresee the result. The Far Eastern markets would become close preserves of Russia and Germany, and those two Powers would fling some fair-sized bone to France, the assistance of the French being no longer required. Does the United States seriously imagine that any regard would be shown for her interests in those regions? None whatever, beyond what she might be able to protect at the sword's point-that is to say, none at all. Great Britain having been disposed of, the United States would become impotent; and, obviously, the converse is no less true. The law of self-preservation, consequently, demands that Great Britain and the United States should, without avoidable delay, declare their joint intention to prevent the exercise of any exclusive influences, by any Power or Powers, in the Far East; let it be, by all means, a "Self-denying Ordinance "-in a word, the policy of the "Open Door." There is no need whatever for the two countries to enter into the entanglement of a general alliance; but it is, I think, imperative that they should combine their forces in the Far East in defence of the very similar interests that are vital to both of them. We may be certain of this, that if Great Britain, or the United States, stands by whilst one of them is being overmatched, the turn of the other will follow soon after.

France is now on very friendly terms with Great Britain, and is traditionally a friend of the United States; but the French are an honorable people, and, whatever and wherever their real sympathies, we need be under no delusion as to the certainty of France's fulfilling to the letter her treaty obligations to Russia. A general conflagration would be easily enough kindled, and could not be quenched without great losses to the world at large. What is most needed is that the owner of every political box of matches that could be employed for the purpose shall be made thoroughly

aware of the consequences to himself, should he venture to use one of them—namely, all the punishment that Great Britain and the United States might be able to give him.

Meanwhile, let us, on both sides of the Atlantic, begin earnestly to set our military houses in such order that, if unhappily we find ourselves called upon to fight, our opponents shall have good cause to regret having forced us into the field. Without strong armies we cannot fully prevail, and neither in Great Britain nor in the United States is there at present an army, available for oversea service, of anything approaching to the necessary strength. Both of us are commercial nations, desirous of remaining at peace; and, for that very reason, it behooves us to be so strong that none will venture to take liberties with us.

A. W. A. POLLOCK.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMIST AND THE PUBLIC.

BY JACOB H. HOLLANDER, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY.

THE development of economic thought has been affected at intervals by more or less formal consideration of the relative extent of its subject-matter and the proper scope of its inquiry. Originally conceived as the art of domestic government, Political Economy became at the hands of the Physiocrats and their immediate precursors a systematic study of the phenomena of wealth. Two influences, emanating from the philosopher-scientists of the early eighteenth century, and together summed up in the historic ambiguity of the term "natural," contributed to this end. First, the existence of economic uniformities was asserted; and, second, the possibility of basic rules of economic conduct was assumed. Similarly, Adam Smith, starting from an academic discussion of "Police," in logical development of the teachings of Pufendorf and Hutcheson, passed with growing sense of the importance of the subject, and under the personal stimulus of the Economistes, to a full consideration of national well-being. Professor Sidgwick has pointed out how this transition from Political Economy, as a branch of the art of government, to Political Economy, as an analysis of wealth phenomena, is actually crystallized in the "Wealth of Nations." Explicitly defining the purpose of economic study as the first, Adam Smith in fact devoted the bulk of his treatise to an analysis of public welfare.

The drift of Political Economy away from rules of economic administration to an analysis of wealth phenomena was aided by the intellectual reaction that followed the excesses of the French Revolution. Economic doctrines, and pre-eminently the doctrines of the new economic liberalism, were identified throughout Europe with French principles and the revolutionary spirit. In

1793, three years after Adam Smith's death, Dugald Stewart still hesitated to give, even before a select audience, any detailed account of the "Wealth of Nations." And Mr. John Rae cites Lord Cockburn's testimony to the fact that, when Stewart first began to give a course of lectures in the University of Edinburgh on political economy in the winter of 1801-2, the mere term "political economy" made people start. "They thought," he says, "it included questions touching the constitution of governments, and not a few hoped to catch Stewart in dangerous propositions."

But the determining force in the transition of Political Economy from a body of precepts to a body of principles was the circumstance that, with the dawn of the nineteenth century, the analysis of wealth phenomena ceased to be exclusively the concern of pamphleteers and special pleaders, and became the subject of deliberate and systematic study by a widening circle of keen and influential minds. The "Wealth of Nations" required too much thought and reflection to be popular, lamented David Hume within a month after its appearance, and the readers of the day, fresh from the pages of the "Decline and Fall," might well have found the Scotch philosopher turgid and prolix. But by 1800 the work had reached a tenth edition; its influence upon political thought was evident; its impress upon political action was in part realized, in part foreshadowed; Dugald Stewart's lectures at Edinburgh were crowded, and young men like Francis Horner, Samuel Romilly, Sydney Smith, George Grote, James Mill, David Ricardo and Thomas Robert Malthus were turning from natural science, from legal studies and from literary activity to earnest pursuit of the subject whose prosecution involved keen intellectual pleasure and whose results stood in intimate relation with urgent practical affairs.

It is doubtful whether economic study has ever been pursued with the same intentness and enthusiasm as in England during the period, roughly speaking, of the Napoleonic War. The reflection is seen in Mrs. Marcet, in Maria Edgeworth and in Harriet Martineau. "It has now become high fashion with blue ladies to talk political economy, and make a great jabbering on the subject," wrote Maria Edgeworth in 1822. And again: "Fine ladies require that their daughters' governesses should teach political economy. 'Do you teach political economy?' 'No, but I can learn

it.' 'Oh dear, no; if you don't teach it, you won't do for me.'

Indeed, contemporary evidence abounds. For example, Francis Horner that brilliant young scholar-publicist whose too early death surely meant grave loss to the progress of economic truth -had read the "Wealth of Nations " before he was seventeen, had followed Dugald Stewart's lectures in Edinburgh thereafter, and was devotedly engaged in economic study while practising at the bar in the Scotch capital.

He describes in his journal, under date of April 30th, 1801, his systematic manner of approach: "In the afternoon Lord Webb and I made our second attack upon Smith's Wealth of Nations'; and finished, for the present, the subject of division of labor. Our mode of reading is, first to go through each chapter with a minute attention to the accuracy of the argument, endeavoring at the same time to recollect all the illustrations by which we can either confirm, contradict, or modify his general principles; when we have read as many chapters as make a complete subject of itself, we review the whole in a more general manner, and take a note of such subjects of future investigation as seem necessary to complete the theory." From the detailed study of Adam Smith, young Horner passed to the writings of the Economistes, finding comfort in Lauderdale's remark that he (Lauderdale) "had repeatedly left the study of the Tableau Economique,' cursing himself for a blockhead." When Smith's perplexing fifth chapter on value and price proved a maze, he sought the clue in the currency tracts of Rice Vaughan, Harris, Bodin, Lowndes and Locke.

It is to this fact of earnest and enthusiastic study, rather than to any formal principle of schematization or methodology, that we must ascribe the Ricardians' easy use of the term "the science of Political Economy." When Ricardo writes to Hutches Trower: "I am very sorry to be obliged to agree with you that there are a very few who are perfect masters of the science of Political Economy," or when he states that it is in the domain of taxation that "the most perfect knowledge of the science is required," the concept of science which he has in mind is a body of principles relating to the production and distribution of wealth, obtained by systematic observation of actual phenomena on the part of a group of capable minds, and made useful by affording governments the possibility of wise economic policies.