his esteemed friend Mr. Akerman, the keeper of Newgate,' we have the following note :

'Why Mr. Boswell should call the keeper of Newgate his " esteemed friend" has puzzled many readers; but besides his natural desire to make the acquaintance of every body who was eminent or remarkable, or even notorious, his strange propensity for witnessing executions probably brought him into more immediate intercourse with the keeper of Newgate.'

On the whole, in spite of a few trivial mistakes and inadvertencies, easy to be corrected hereafter, we may safely pronounce this Boswell' the best edition of an English book that has appeared in our time. It is set forth, as might be supposed, with all the luxury of modern embellishment. The engravings are exquisitely beautiful; and one wholly new thing in this way, viz. a Boswell, after a dashing early drawing of Lawrence (much in the style of a sketch by H. B.') is, to our fancy, more satisfactory, in the case of such a person, than the most elaborate portrait, done under the fear of the proprieties, could ever have been. We ought not to omit, that a really good index has now, for the first time, been given with a book that, above almost any other, wanted such an appendage. Boswell's Life of Johnson is, we suspect, about the richest dictionary of wit and wisdom any language can boast, and its treasures may now be referred to with infinitely greater ease than heretofore.

IN

ART. II. Introductory Lectures on Political Economy, being part of a Course delivered in Easter Term, 1831. By Richard Whately, D.D., Professor of Political Economy to the University of Oxford, (now Archbishop of Dublin.) London. 1831. N a recent article we exposed several of the fallacies, contradictions, and downright absurdities of the modern writers on political economy, and traced the most pernicious of them to a fundamental error, by which the whole fabric of the science was necessarily vitiated,-the confounding wealth, as measured by its exchangeable value, with utility or advantageousness. Since the publication of that paper, another chair of Political Economy having been instituted, and another professor having put forth a series of Introductory Lectures on the science, we opened his work with some curiosity to ascertain whether it would be attempted to get over our objection, or that the reform we recommended would be adopted, and the science of wealth confined within its proper boundaries, and strictly segregated from the science of political welfare. The latter we find to be the object which Dr. Whately + Whately's Lectures. 1831.

Art. I. No. LXXXVII.

has

has proposed to himself, though he has somewhat slurred over the difficulty, and has not expressed himself with the clearness and decision which this important point, affecting as it does the very nature of the science he professes, undoubtedly required of him. The eight lectures now published are, it is true, only introductory—a lengthened preface-nay, but a part of a preface, since the reader is, at the end, referred to his next course of lectures for the elucidation of other preliminary matters, namely, the explanation of the practical principles relative to the mode in which the science should be studied, and the paramount importance of precise language on the subject.' At this rate of progress, it will be only after some years, and at the end of several volumes, that the lecturer will enter upon the subject itself. The extraordinary length of these prefatory discourses must, like a puritan's grace before meat, be somewhat tantalizing to the appetite of the students, who are naturally impatient to get at the marrow of the matter. If the Professor is so dilatory in making his approaches, we fear malicious people will conclude he is deficient either in the courage or the forces necessary for attacking the citadel.

However, we are gratified to find Dr. Whately, in the very commencement of his first lecture, concede at once, that political economy, as it has been hitherto pursued and understood, has reference only to wealth, and to wealth, not in the sense of utility, but of exchangeable value. Indeed, the whole of these eight introductory lectures are occupied by an apology for the study of the science of wealth in this sense, and a series of arguments to show that it is not inconsistent with religion, morality, or national happiness. In these conclusions, of course, we agree most readily; just as we admit the same of the study of hydrostatics, for example, or any other of the sciences of fact. All we contend for is, (and this point Dr. Whately has evaded,) that the limits of the subject-matter of the science should be well defined, and always borne in mind; that the laws which we discover on examination to regulate the production and distribution of wealth in a nation, should not be mistaken for the laws which determine the wellbeing of that nation, any more than the laws which regulate the conduct of its waters. Wealth is, no doubt, an element in national welfare, and its increase, in due proportions and directions, is an increase of the general good-but so also is water; and we might as reasonably take the laws of hydrostatics as exclusive rules for legislation, as the laws of the science of wealth. We might as well place a scientific engineer at the head of the state, with directions to supply the country with the largest possible quantity of water, without any regard to its distribution, or

* Whately's Lectures. 1831.

the

the circumstances which may render it desirable in some places, hurtful in others--as give up the reins of government to a political economist, in order that he may augment the aggregate stock of wealth, without regard to the manner of its distribution, or the circumstances which may, and do, render a small increase in one direction of far greater public utility than a larger increase in another direction.

That the mere increase of wealth is no measure of the prosperity of a community we have already shown; but a point of such importance, that the whole question, as to the true ends of government and legislation, depend upon it, cannot be too often or too clearly demonstrated. As an example, therefore, let us suppose a country, A., to raise large quantities of corn by the labour of a body of agriculturists, who, from the conditions on which alone they are allowed to cultivate the soil, have but a bare subsistence left to them, and live in a state of extreme misery. The corn remaining beyond their consumption is the property of the landowner, who exports it in exchange for luxuries, as jewels, wines, pictures, and rich stuffs, for his own consumption. Now there can be no question that the total wealth of A. is increased by this trade, because for the wealth exported in the shape of corn, wealth of greater value, in the shape of luxuries, is imported. But is the trade which thus produces an increase of wealth in A., of a beneficial character? Does it tend to increase the prosperity of the inhabitants of A.? Suppose the trade did not exist, and that the same quantity of corn we first supposed to be exported was consumed in maintaining the population of A. in abundance instead of penury; whatever circumstances occasioned this different state of things, of a political or other nature, it is evident that the condition of the inhabitants of A. would be vastly superior to what we supposed them before, though the total amount of wealth possessed by them would be less.

It is certain, therefore, that the amount of wealth in a country is no measure of its prosperity, understanding by that term the aggregate of comfort, ease, and happiness enjoyed by its inhabitants; and that the study of the circumstances which determine the wealth of a country is entirely distinct from the study of the circumstances which determine its prosperity, while all will allow that it is the latter class of circumstances only which are to be regarded by the statesman and the philanthropist.

The name which has been unfortunately given to the science of wealth (however trifling such a circumstance may appear to those who have never considered the power of names) is one of the principal causes of the existing misapprehension as to its real

*No. LXXXVII. pp. 43, 44.

limits.

limits. The term Political Economy naturally conveys the ideal of the study of the means of applying to the greatest advantage the resources of a nation. The Economists themselves plunge into the fallacy at their first step, and drag their disciples along with them, when they declare, that 'political economy is to the state, what domestic economy is to a family.'* Domestic economy, however, regulates the application of the resources of a family, not with a view to the mere increase of its wealth, but rather to such a disposition of it as may conduce most to the comfort and gratification of its members. It is the domestic economy of the miser only that affords a parallel to the political economy of our professors. Both confine their views to the bare increase of the sum total of wealth, without heeding the sacrifices of ease or enjoyment at which such increase may be obtained, or studying the modes in which it may be applied to the production of pleasure. Both rather assume, by a very similar aberration of intellect, that every increase of wealth (quocunque modo rem) is, necessarily, tantamount to an increase of happiness.

A name which conveys an incorrect idea is liable to become a source of perpetual error; and the application of the term political economy to the science of wealth, has perhaps tended, more than any other cause, to induce its followers to forget the narrow limits within which their researches are properly confined, and to trespass on the domain of the moralist and the statesman. Dr. Whately, in order to remedy the evil, very reasonably suggests the substitution of another name (catallactics) for that of political economy, although he doubts whether it is not too late to introduce the change. We are not of that opinion; we consider that from the moment it is ascertained and acknowledged that the science is concerned only with wealth in the sense of exchangeable value, and has no direct reference to utility or national welfare, it is placed upon a new basis, and must be wholly remodelled; † and a change of name, even though the former title were unobjectionable in itself, would be exceedingly desirable, as a memento of the change of character, and a pledge for the avoidance of early errors. Still more, then, is it advisable when the old name, as we have shown, is both inappropriate and mischievous, from its tendency to produce and keep alive those errors.

* M'Culloch, Principles, p. 1, last edition. Mill, Principles, p. 1.

The witty Doctor Folliott, in Mr. Peacock's amusing jeu d'esprit, Crotchet Castle, deals many a severe hit among the Macquedys of the day, of which the following is not the least effective:- The moment you admit that one class of things, without reference to what they respectively cost, is better worth having than another; that a smaller commercial value, with one mode of distribution, is better than a greater commercial value with another mode of distribution, the whole of that curious fabric of postulates and dogmas which you call the science of political economy, and which I call politica œconomica inscientia, tumbles into pieces.'-p. 180. VOL. XLVI. NO. XCI,

E

With

With regard to the choice of a new appellation, we are well contented to take that which Dr. Whately proposes, namely, catallactics, since it serves as a definition to the science, limiting it to its true meaning, the study of exchanges, or of wealth, the subject-matter of exchanges.' This view does not differ from that of political economists in general, who, when they have attempted to define the object of their inquiries, have limited it to exchangeable articles. But while in definition they have been thus modest, in practice they have been extravagantly otherwise.

We know well that those writers who have been accustomed to take their fling over the whole domain of moral and political science, and to consider their doctrines as the text-book of the legislature, will demur both to the propriety of this new appellation, and to the narrow boundaries within which we propose, by its aid, to restrain their capricious caracoles-Mr. M'Culloch, for example, who, in the introduction to the last edition of his 'Principles,' while distinguishing the politician from the political economist, confines the former to the consideration of the constitution of the government, and claims for the latter the undivided right of sitting in judgment upon its acts.

'Whatever measures affect the production or distribution of wealth, necessarily come within the scope of his observation, and are freely canvassed by him. He examines whether they are in unison with the principles of the science. If they are, he pronounces them to be advantageous, and shows the nature and extent of the benefits of which they will be productive; if they are not, he shows in what respect they are defective, and to what extent their operation will be injurious.'

We put aside the shallow disclaimer of interference with the constitution of governments,-shallow indeed, because whatever rules determine the advantages or disadvantages of the acts of a particular form of government, must necessarily determine the character of the form of government which produces them.

it is clear that in this, as in numberless other passages, the professors of political economy arrogate for their science the power of deciding on the utility of laws and state measures, upon the strength of the evident fallacy that whatever increases the wealth of a nation must be for its benefit.

We will, however, fix these gentlemen at once between the horns of a dilemma; for either the science in question must be confined to treat of wealth solely as measured by exchangeable value, in which case it can have no more paramount influence over the general interests of a nation, or the laws which are necessary to promote those interests, than any other of the political, moral, or economic sciences,-or, on the other hand, it does not measure