Principles of Political Economy: With Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy, Volume 2

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Parker and Son, 1852 - Economics - 571 pages

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Page 553 - Laisserfaire, in short, should be the general practice : every departure from it, unless required by some great good, is a certain evil.
Page 324 - It is scarcely necessary to remark, that a stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement There would be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as much room for improving the Art of Living, and much more likelihood of its being improved, when minds ceased to be engrossed by the art of getting on.
Page 523 - The only case in which, on mere principles of political economy, protecting duties can be defensible, is when they are imposed temporarily (especially in a young and rising nation) in hopes of naturalizing a foreign industry, in itself perfectly suitable to the circumstances of the country.
Page 1 - It is not with money that things are really purchased. Nobody's income (except that of the gold or silver miner) is derived from the precious metals. The pounds or shillings which a person receives weekly or yearly, are not what constitutes his income; they are a sort of tickets or orders which he can present for payment at any shop he pleases, and which entitle him to receive a certain value of any commodity that he makes choice of.
Page 329 - ... when they were brought together in numbers, to work socially under the same roof; when railways enabled them to shift from place to place, and change their patrons and employers as easily as their coats; when they were encouraged to seek a share in the government, by means of the electoral franchise.
Page 549 - The inferiority of government agency, for example, in any of the common operations of industry or commerce, is proved by the fact, that it is hardly ever able to maintain itself in equal competition with individual agency, where the individuals possess the requisite degree of industrial enterprise, and can command the necessary assemblage of means. All the facilities which a government enjoys of access to information; all the means which it possesses of remunerating, and therefore of commanding,...
Page 377 - The certainty of what each individual ought to pay is, in taxation, a matter of so great importance, that a very considerable degree of inequality, it appears, I believe, from the experience of all nations, is not near so great an evil as a very small degree of uncertainty.
Page 542 - ... leaving individuals free to use their own means of pursuing any object of general interest, the government, not meddling with them, but not trusting the object solely to their care, establishes, side by side with their arrangements, an agency of its own for a like purpose.
Page 351 - In this or some such mode, the existing accumulations of capital might honestly, and by a kind of spontaneous process, become in the end the joint property of all who participate in their productive employment : a transformation which, thus effected...
Page 551 - ... habit of spontaneous action for a collective interest — who look habitually to their government to command or prompt them in all matters of joint concern — who expect to have everything done for them, except what can be made an affair of mere habit and routine — have their faculties only half developed ; their education is defective in one of its most important branches.

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