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A HISTORY OF ECONOMIC DOCTRINES




                              A HISTORY OF
                           ECONOMIC DOCTRINES
                    FROM THE TIME OF THE PHYSIOCRATS
                           TO THE PRESENT DAY

                             BY CHARLES GIDE
                  PROFESSOR OF SOCIAL ECONOMICS IN THE
                   FACULTY OF LAW UNIVERSITY OF PARIS

                                   AND

                              CHARLES RIST
                  PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE
                   FACULTY OF LAW IN THE UNIVERSITY OF
                               MONTPELLIER

             AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE SECOND REVISED
                      AND AUGMENTED EDITION OF 1913

                     UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE LATE
                         PROFESSOR WILLIAM SMART

                                   BY
                            R. RICHARDS B.A.
                  LECTURER IN THE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF
                               NORTH WALES

                         D. C. HEATH AND COMPANY
                         BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
                   DALLAS ATLANTA LONDON SAN FRANCISCO

                          _All rights reserved_

          _Printed in Great Britain at THE BALLANTYNE PRESS by
                   SPOTTISWOODE, BALLANTYNE & CO. LTD.
                       Colchester, London & Eton_




PREFATORY NOTE


Gide’s _Principles of Political Economy_, of which there are several
translations, is probably better known to English students than any
similar work of foreign origin on the subject, and many readers of that
book will welcome an opportunity of perusing this volume which Professor
Gide has produced in collaboration with Professor Rist.

The remarkable dearth of literature of this kind in English may be
pleaded in further extenuation of the attempt to present the work in
an English garb, and readers of the Preface will be able to contrast
the position in this country with the very different condition of
things prevailing across the Channel. The contrast might even be
carried a stage farther, and it would be interesting to speculate upon
the historical causes which have made Germany supreme in the field of
economic research and history, which influenced France in her choice of
the history of theory, and which decreed that England should on the whole
remain faithful to the tradition of the “pure doctrine.” Can it be that
something like a “territorial division of labour” applies in matters
intellectual as well as economic?

Be that as it may, we can hardly pretend to be satisfied with the
position of our country in this matter of doctrinal history. Of the nine
names mentioned in the Preface, only two are English, namely, Ashley
and Ingram; and it is no disparagement to Ashley’s illuminating study
of mediæval England to say that the main interest of his work is not
doctrinal, and that Cunningham’s name might with equal appropriateness
have been included in the list.

Omitting both Ashley and Cunningham, whose labours have been largely
confined to the realm of economic history, we are thus left with Ingram’s
short but learned work as the sole contribution of English scholarship to
the history of economic thought.

English readers may possibly be puzzled by the omission of any
references, except a stray quotation or two, to Cannan’s _History of
the Theories of Production and Distribution_. But the microscopic care
with which the earlier theories are examined and elucidated in that work
have resulted in its being regarded as a most valuable contribution to
economic theory itself, and under the circumstances the absence of any
reference to it in the Preface is not altogether surprising.

Our apparent indifference to the development which theory has undergone
in the course of the last 150 years is all the more difficult to explain
when we recall the fact that England has always been the classic home
of theory, both orthodox and socialist, and our backwardness in this
respect contrasts very unfavourably with the progress made in the kindred
study of economic history during the last twenty-five years under the
inspiration of writers like Ashley, Cunningham, Maitland, Round, and
Seebohm.

Most critics are by this time agreed that Ingram’s work, lucid and
learned though it is, is somewhat marred by being written too exclusively
from the standpoint of a Positivist philosopher who thought he saw in
the rapid rise of the Historical school an indisputable proof of the
soundness of the Comtean principles and a presage of their ultimate
triumph.

Complete impartiality in the writing of history, even were it attainable,
may not be altogether desirable, and the present authors have hastened
to disclaim any such qualification. Notwithstanding this, some of their
readers will possibly feel that certain French schools, both ancient
and modern, have been dealt with at disproportionate length, and that
scarcely enough attention has been paid to certain English and American
writers. But it will surely do us little harm occasionally “to see
ourselves as others see us.”

The chief interest of the present volume will probably be found to
consist in the attempt made to give us something like a true perspective
