Here lastly may be mentioned another Italian thinker who,eminently original and even eccentric,cannot easily be classedamong his contemporaries,though some Continental writers of our own century have exhibited similar modes of thought.
This was Giammaria Ortes (1713-1790).He is opposed to the liberalist tendencies of his time,but does not espouse thedoctrines of the mercantile system,rejecting the theory of the balance of trade,and demanding commercial freedom.It is inthe Middle Ages that he finds his social and economic type.He advocates the maintenance of church property,is averse tothe ascendency of the money power,and has the medieval dislike for interest on loans.He entertains the singular idea thatthe wealth of communities is always and everywhere in a fixed ratio to their population,the latter being determined by theformer.Poverty,therefore,necessarily waits on wealth,and the rich,in becoming so,only gain what the poor lose.Thosewho are interested in the improvement of the condition of the people labour in vain,so long as they direct their efforts to theincrease of the sum of the national wealth,which it is beyond their power to alter,instead of to the distribution of thatwealth,which it is possible to modify.The true remedy for poverty lies in mitigating the gain-pursuing propensities in therich and in men of business.Ortes studied in a separate work the subject of population;he formulates its increase as"geometrical,"but recognizes that,as a limit is set to such increase amongst the lower animals by mutual destruction,so is itin the human species by "reason"--the "prudential restraint"of which Malthus afterwards made so much.He regards theinstitution of celibacy as no less necessary and advantageous than that of marriage.He enunciates what has since beenknown as the "law of diminishing returns to agricultural industry."He was careless as to the diffusion of his writings;andhence they remained almost unknown till they were included in the Custodi collection of Italian economists,when theyattracted much attention by the combined sagacity and waywardness which marked their author's intellectual character.
SPAIN
The same breath of a new era which was in the air elsewhere in Europe made itself felt also in Spain.
In the earlier part of the eighteenth century Geronimo Ustariz had written his Teorica y Practica del Comercio y Marina (1724;published,1740;Eng.transl.by John Kippax,1751;French by Forbonnais,1753),in which he carries mercantileprinciples to their utmost extreme.
The reforming spirit of the latter half of the century was best represented in that country by Pedro Rodriguez,Count ofCampomanes (1723-1802).He pursued with ardour the same studies and in some degree the same policy as his illustriouscontemporary Turgot,without,however,having arrived at so advanced a point of view.He was author of Respuesta fiscalsobre abolir la tasa y establecer et comercio de granos (1764),Discurso sobre el fomento de industria popolar (1774),and Discurso sobre la educacion de las artesanos y su fomento (1775).By means of these writings,justly eulogised byRobertson,(16)as well as by his personal efforts as minister,he sought to establish the freedom of the corn trade,to removethe hindrances to industry arising from medieval survivals,to have a large development to manufactures,and to liberateagriculture from the odious burdens to which it was subject.He saw that,notwithstanding the enlightened administration ofCharles III,Spain still suffered from the evil results of the blind confidence reposed by her people in her gold mines,andenforced the lesson that the real sources of the wealth and power of his country must be sought,not in America,but in herown industry.
In both Italy and Spain,as is well observed by Comte,(17)the impulse towards social change took principally the direction ofeconomic reform,because the pressure exercised by Governments prevented so large a measure of free speculation in thefields of philosophy and general politics as was possible in France.In Italy,it may be added,the traditions of the greatindustrial past of the northern cities of that country also tended to fix attention chiefly on the economic side of public policyand legislation.
GERMANY
We have seen that in Italy and England political economy had its beginnings in the study of practical questions relatingchiefly to money or to foreign commerce.In Germany it arose (as Roscher has shown)out of the so-called cameralisticsciences.Soon after the close of the Middle Ages there existed in most German countries a council,known as the Kammer(Lat.camera ),which was occupied with the management of the public domain and the guardianship of regal rights.TheEmperor Maximilian found this institution existing in Burgundy,and established,in imitation of it,aulic councils atInnspruck and Vienna in 1498and 1501.Not only finance and taxation,but questions also of economic police,came to beentrusted to these bodies.A special preparation became necessary for their members,and chairs of cameralistic science werefounded in universities for the teaching of the appropriate body of doctrine.One side of the instruction thus given borrowedits materials from the sciences of external nature,dealing,as it did,with forestry,mining,general technology,and the like;the other related to the conditions of national prosperity as depending on human relations and institutions;and out of thelatter,German political economy was at first developed.
