POLITICAL E ONOMY is the name given to a department of knowledge the limits of which are not yet accurately defined. The word economy, applied to domestic concerns, means the art of well administering the private affairs of a tardily, of regulating its expen diture according to its income, and providing for the wants of the members of the household. By analogy, political or "public " economy has been considered by many as conversant about the principles of administering the wealth of a country with a view to its increase, regulating the expenditure, providing for the wants of the people, and endeavouring to maintain and increase their comforts. But by taking such an extensive view of the subject, most writers, and especially continental writers, have considered it necessary to investigate all the causes of the prosperity of nations, and have involved themselves in multifarious discussions on the various forms of government and of civil institutions which are supposed to affect the economical condition of a people. By so doing they have encroached upon the science of general polities and legislation, and have brought forward their own theories of laws, ethics, and administration, with the view of showing their influence on the social state. But it is evident that such a vast field of inquiry must exceed the powers of any single writer, and that the attempt to embrace so many difficult and varied subjects under one division of knowledge, tends to confuse rather than to eluchlite. 3loderu writers, especially in lingland,•have therefore limited their inquiries to the principles which govern the production and accumula tion of wealth, and its distribution and consumption. "The Wealth of Nations" was the title which Adam Smith gave to his work. In this consists the main difference between the modern English and the Italian and French economists. The latter maintain that the political economist is concerned not only with the aggregate production of wealth, but with its most beneficial distribution among individuals, not only with wealth in short, but with happiness also. The modern English writers, on the contrary, say that the appropriate subject of the political economist is not happiness, but wealth ; that wealth is confined to material objects, the produce, of land and of industry ; that the political economist who assumes to explain the phenomena of the production of wealth ought to lay down the general principles on which wealth is produced, as they are deducible from actual facts ; it is the business of the statesman, the philosopher, or the politician, to say what be thinks best for the general prosperity of society, after ho has examined the evidence of the political economist, which is an essential part of the evidence, but not the sole evidence to be attended to in the conduct of a nation's affairs. But hero the English econo
mists also seem to ho divided among themselves. Some appear Ito think that the principles of political economy, as the term is understood by them, may be deduced with the certainty of mathematical demon stration, whilst others assert that there are many important propo sitions in political economy which require limitations and exceptions. " The desire to simplify and generalise has occasioned an unwillingness to acknowledge the operation of more causes than one in the production of particular effects ; and if one cause would account for a considerable portion of a certain class of phenomena, the whole has been ascribed to it without sufficient attention to the facts which would not admit of being so solved." (Malthus, Priueiples of Political Economy,' Introduction.) Malthus quotes the controversy on the bullion question as an instance of this kind of error.
We cannot enter into anything like an examination, however brief, of the principles of political economy; but shall merely state a few general propositions which are universally acknowledged as true. 1. Every man desires to obtain additional wealth with as littlo trouble to himself as possible. 2. The increase of population is limited either by physical or moral evil, or by prudential motives. 3. The powers of labour, and of the other instruments which produce wealth, may be indefinitely increased, by using their products as the means of further production. 4. Agricultural produce is not susceptible of the same unlimited increase as manufactures. The principal topics discussed by political economists are : I, the definition of wealth ; 2, of productive and unproductive labour ; 3, of the nature and measures of value ; 4, of tho rent of land ; 5, the wages of labour; 6, the profits of capital 7, the results of machinery; 8, the circulating medium, or currency ; 9, the nature and conditions of commerce, or exchange of commodities. Most of these subjects are treated in this work under the heads ACCUMULATION, BALANCE OF TRADE, BULLION, CONSUMPTION, CUR RENCY, ESCIIANGE, PROFIT, RENT, WAGES, WEALTH.