The author at the outset expresses the hope that it will strengthen,and add consistence to,the scientific fabric "built up bythe labours of Adam Smith,Malthus,Ricardo,and Mill."Whilst recognizing with him the great merits of Smith,and the realabilities and services of his three successors here named,we cannot entertain the same opinion as Cairnes respecting thepermanance of the fabric they constructed.We hold that a new edifice is required,incorporating indeed many of thematerials of the old,but planned on different ideas and in some respects with a view to different ends--above all,resting ondifferent philosophic foundations,and having relation in its whole design to the more comprehensive structure of which itwill form but one department,namely,the general science of society.
Cairnes's Slave Power ,(1862)was the most valuable work which appeared on the subject of the great American conflict.
FRANCE
All the later European schools presuppose-in part adopting,in part criticising--the work of the English economists fromSmith (62)to Ricardo and the Epigoni.The German school has had in a greater degree than any other a movement of itsown-following,at least in its more recent period,an original method,and tending to special and characteristic conclusions.
The French school,on the other hand,-if we omit the Socialists,who do not here come under consideration,-has in the mainreproduced the doctrines of the leading English thinkers,--stopping short,however,in general of the extremes of Ricardoand his disciples.In the field of exposition the French are unrivalled;and in political economy they have produced a series ofmore or less remarkable systematic treatises,text-books,and compendiums,at the head of which stands the celebrated workof J.B.Say.But the number of seminal minds which have appeared in French economic literature of writers who havecontributed important truths,introduced improvements of method,or presented the phenomena under new light--has notbeen large.Sismondi,Dunoyer,and Bastiat will deserve our attention,as being the most important of those who occupyindependent positions (whether permanently tenable or not),if we pass over for the present the great philosophicalrenovation of Auguste Comte,which comprehended actually or potentially all the branches of sociological inquiry.Beforeestimating the labours of Bastiat.we shall find it desirable to examine the views of Carey,the most renowned of Americaneconomists,with which the latest teachings of the ingenious and eloquent Frenchman are,up to a certain point,inremarkable agreement.Cournot,too,must find a place among the French writers of this period,as the chief representativeof the conception of a mathematical method in political economy.
