The Quarterly Review

THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

ART. I.-1. Definitions in Political Economy. By the Rev. T. R. Malthus, Professor of Political Economy in the East India College, Hertfordshire, &c. &c. London. 1827.

2. Principles of Political Economy. By J. R. M'Culloch, Esq., Professor of Political Economy to the University of London. Second Edition. 1830.

3. An Inquiry into the Natural Grounds of Right to Vendible Property or Wealth. By Samuel Read. Edinburgh. 1829. T was not till towards the end of the last century that the class of inquiries to which the name of Political Economy is usually applied began to claim the rank of a science. That the French economists were premature in dignifying by that title their imperfect and ill-connected disquisitions will hardly be denied; but in the hands of our sagacious countryman, Adam Smith, something like a methodical and definite form was given to the subject, and the attempt made to treat it in its full extent, by laying down principles and closely pursuing them through all their conse

quences.

It must, we fear, be conceded by all who are acquainted with the more recent works on political economy, that whatever the degree to which the science was advanced by Dr. Smith, it has received few or no substantial improvements since his time, in spite of the volumes that have issued from the press on the subject, and the tribes of authors that have successively lectured upon it ex cathedra. Professor after Professor has brought forward his special doctrine with no small flourish of trumpets, as a newly discovered truth: but, each having for his new erection uniformly destroyed the productions of his predecessor, and occasionally his own, the sum total of our acquisitions during this period, even in the estimation of the most enthusiastic devotees of the science, is but small. They too are divided into sects and schools, perhaps, equalling in number the individual authors; and the consequence of this discordance, even on the most fundamental questions, coupled as it has been with glaring inconsistencies, and the frequent assertion of the most startling paradoxes, is a general feeling of disinclination, we had almost said of disgust, in the public mind, towards a science which, during so considerable a

VOL. XLIV. NO. LXXXVII.

period,

period, has confessedly propagated so many dangerous fallacies, and established so few useful truths.

It is our intention in the following pages to offer some justification for this distrust of the modern school of political economy, by exhibiting the most striking errors into which its writers have fallen; and at the same time to put forward, with submission, our own opinions on some of the important topics which have been so grievously mangled, in the hope of rescuing their study, than which none can be of deeper interest to the welfare of mankind, from the disrepute into which it has of late fallen with a large portion of the world. As we proceed in this task, we think it will appear that the principal writers on political economy, within the present century, have had but a very indistinct notion of the nature and limits of their subject; that they have habitually employed the same terms in contradictory senses, and so rendered their writings, in a great measure, unintelligible, not only to their readers, but even to themselves; that there is scarcely one of the numerous topics handled by them, such as the laws regarding value, labour, wages, profits, rent, and free trade, which they have not left in a worse condition than they found it; and finally, that the whole science, as hitherto understood and carried on, has been founded on an entirely false assumption, which must infallibly either vitiate the whole superstructure, or render it, in its present condition, anything but the trusty and unerring guide in legislation, for which it has been ostentatiously put forward by its cultivators.

Since political economy is defined by all its expounders, with but few, and those unimportant, variations, as the science of the laws which regulate the production and distribution of wealth,' it might be supposed that the meaning of the word 'wealth' would be first fully determined and agreed upon by every writer; otherwise he leaves us in ignorance of the very essence of the subject which he is discussing; and the political economy of each author who has his own peculiar opinion on wealth, will be sui generis, and a totally different science from the political economy of another. It is nevertheless true, that few have thought it at all necessary to define, or apparently to form a tolerably distinct idea of, the nature of wealth, when they set about discussing its causes. Adam Smith, whose work professes to be An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of Wealth,' never attempts a strict definition of it. When, for instance, he calls it the annual produce of land and labour,' he certainly does not understand the useless products of the earth, though his phrase would include them, while it appears to exclude many things which are not annually produced, as buildings, land itself, and fixed capital of great durability. Mr. Ricardo, and his follower Mr. Mill, have attempted to evade the

difficulty

difficulty by making no use at all of the term wealth. But, whatever advantage they might have expected from avoiding this particular phrase, they could not omit defining the subject matter of their inquiries, without endangering the correctness of their conclusions a danger which we shall soon see they have by no means escaped.

Mr. Malthus has undertaken the definition of wealth: and, following what he considers to have been the general meaning of Smith, as well as the sense in which the word is usually understood in society, declares it to consist of the material objects useful or agreeable to man, which have required some portion of human exertion to appropriate or produce.'* By Mr. McCulloch wealth is defined as those articles or products, useful or agreeable to man, which possess exchangeable value.'+ As, in the opinion of both the latter writers, whatever possesses exchangeable value must have required some portion of human exertion to appropriate or produce it, the only real difference in their definitions consists in Mr. Malthus's restriction of the term to material objects. Mr. M'Culloch, indeed, by the use of the words articles or products,' would, at first sight, appear to contemplate only material substances; but in the subsequent parts of his work (the chapter on Consumption, for example), it is evident, that he designs his definition to embrace all the purchaseable means of human enjoyment,' including, together with material objects, the gratifications afforded by the talents of players, authors, artists, the services of menials, the protection of governments, &c.

Now, though it certainly appears, at first, rather a forced application of the term, to call the talent of a violin-player wealth, yet, surely, it is quite as worthy of being so estimated as his fiddle, which Mr. Malthus and Dr. Smith would allow to be wealth, though, without the existence of the talent, it would clearly be of no value. Again, it is impossible, as Mr. Malthus would have us, to separate the material part of a book, which he would assert to compose its value as wealth, from its immaterial ingredients of wit, pathos, or instruction, which, according to him, are not to be considered in its estimation, and, yet, without which it would be mere waste paper. Mr. Malthus finds fault with Mr. M'Culloch for introducing the term value into his definition of wealth, as only explaining ignotum per ignotius. But surely this remark is quite as applicable to a definition, in which the word material is introduced. Matter only becomes known to us through certain qualities affecting our senses. It is the possession of sensible qualities which alone distinguishes, to our comprehension, the different forms of existence. When, therefore, Mr. Malthus defines wealth, as con

* Definitions, p. 234.

B 2

Principles, p. 5.

sisting

sisting of those material objects which are useful or agreeable to man, &c.—he must mean those qualities of matter which are capable of gratifying man, &c. When he calls corn or wine wealth, he means the qualities possessed by those objects of gratifying man; and the degree in which they are to be reckoned as wealth, in other words, their value, he must estimate by the intensity of these qualities. The mere brute matter of corn, or wine, separated from the qualities of flavour, nutrition, &c., if it were possible to form an idea of what it is, would surely not be supposed by Mr. Malthus to determine their classification as wealth. Either all matter equally is wealth, which, certainly, Mr. Malthus would not admit, or it is the agreeable and useful qualities of matter alone that constitute wealth. But if the gratifying qualities of corn, wine, clothes, houses, carriages, horses, books, pictures, are to be esteemed wealth, so also must be the gratifying qualities of persons, as players, musicians, artists, authors, menial servants, &c. A person is esteemed wealthy quite as much according to the degree in which he can command the latter gratifications, as the former.

The services of menials seem to have puzzled Mr. Malthus and his school exceedingly; and it is absolutely ludicrous to see the nervous anxiety with which they set them apart as a peculiar class of gratifications not amenable to the general laws respecting wealth, and, indeed, out of the pale of the science. We think, however, we may defy the professor's penetration to point out any broad distinction between the useful or agreeable qualities of the third footman behind a coach,' (Definitions, p. 75,) and those of his livery and gilt cane. The whole footman-livery, cane, and allis an object of gratification to his master's vanity; and if the livery is to be reckoned as wealth, so also must its wearer. If we estimate as wealth the result of the labour and capital of the farmer who breeds a sheep, of the grazier who fattens, and of the butcher who slaughters and cuts it up, are we to stop there, and not include in the value of the joint of mutton the labour of the cook who prepares it for the table? If the boot-maker and the blacking-maker are producers of wealth, why not also the footboy who applies the blacking to the boot? However defined, the term wealth must include the idea of a reference to comparative estimation. Mr. Malthus himself speaks of estimating the national wealth. It is impossible to estimate material objects otherwise than by comparing their immaterial qualities, such as beauty, harmony, flavour, nourishment, and other means of gratification. So far, therefore, from wealth consisting exclusively of material objects, it consists solely of immaterial qualities. And if we consider these to be wealth when they

belong

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