Journalists and members of Parliament confound the laws of the pure science with the maxims of the practical science.It was thus that Mr Gladstone in the Land Act controversy of 1881 was constantly accused of violating the laws of Political Economy.It was impossible for Mr Gladstone to do any such thing.The laws of Political Economy can no more be violated than those of physical science.What the journalists meant was that he had departed from a great economic precept -that which recommends freedom of contract.
The Historical Method pursues a different line of investigation.It examines the actual causes of economic development and considers the influence of institutions,such as the medieval guilds,our present land-laws,or the political constitution of any given country,in determining the distribution of wealth.Without the aid of the Historical Method it would be impossible,for instance,to understand why one-half of the land in the United Kingdom is owned by 2512 persons.
And not only does it investigate the stages of economic development in a given country,but it compares them with those which have obtained in other countries and times,and seeks by such comparison to discover laws of universal application.Take,as an instance of the discoveries of this Comparative Political Economy,the tendency which Sir H.Maine and M.de Laveleye have pointed out to pass from collective to individual ownership of land.This is a law which is true of nearly all civilised countries.We must be careful,however,not to generalise too hastily in these matters.A clever pamphlet lately published in Dublin appeals to another generalisation of Sir H.Maine -'Maine's Law,'as it is denominated -in condemnation of recent legislation.'Sir H.Maine,'says the writer,'in his Ancient Law has remarked that the movement of all progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from status to contract.The demand of this agitation is that Ireland should be legislatively declared a retrograde society,and that the social movement should be from contract back again to status.''is it expedient,'asks another,'to reform our laws so as to assimilate them to those in use among nations of an inferior social development?'A deeper study of existing civilisation in England,and of other civilisations,past and present,would have shown that the step was not a retrograde one -that whilst the sphere of contract has been widening,it has been also narrowing,and that such a condition of things as we see in Ireland has never existed anywhere else without deep social misery,outrage,and disturbance.Custom or law or public opinion,or all three,have intervened in the past,and will intervene in the future.It is true that there is a movement from status to contract;yet if we look closely,we find that the State has over and over again had to interfere to restrict the power of individuals in which this movement results.
The real course of development has been first from status to contract,then from contract to a new kind of status determined by the law or,in other words,from unregulated to regulated contract.The Historical Method is also of value because it makes us see where economic laws and precepts are relative.The old economists were wont to speak as if these laws and precepts were universal.Free trade,for instance,is a sound policy,no doubt,for England,and for all nations at a certain stage of development;but it is open to any one to say that free trade is only good under certain conditions.No English economist,it is true,has dared to say this.Mr Jevons,to take an example,would admit restrictions only for considerations of the most paramount importance.6But it is an unjustifiable prejudgment of the question to lay down that this policy must be wise at all times and places.I do not mean to assert,however,that there are not some laws which are universally true,such as the law of diminishing returns.
This discussion about method may seem barren,but it is not really so.Take such a question as the functions of the State.Mr Senior spent much time in attempting to discover an universal formula which should define their proper limit all the world over.Such an attempt must be abandoned.The proper limits of Government interference are relative to the nature of each particular state and the stage of its civilisation.It is a matter of great importance at the present day for us to discover what these limits are in our own case,for administration bids fair to claim a large share of our attention in the future.It would be well if,in studying the past,we could always bear in mind the problems of the present,and go to that past to seek large views of what is of lasting importance to the human race.
It is an old complaint that histories leave out of sight those vital questions which are connected with the condition of the people.The French Revolution has indeed profoundly modified our views of history,but much still remains to be done in that direction.If I could persuade some of those present to study Economic History,to follow out the impulse originally given by Malthus to the study of the history of the mass of the people,I should be indeed glad.Party historians go to the past for party purposes;they seek to read into the past the controversies of the present.You must pursue facts for their own sake,but penetrated with a vivid sense of the problems of your own time.
This is not a principle of perversion,but a principle of selection.You must have some principle of selection,and you could not have a better one than to pay special attention to the history of the social problems which are agitating the world now,for you may be sure that they are problems not of temporary but of lasting importance.
