ew it to be needful for the people
of his time to hear, if the will to hear were in them: whom, therefore,
as the time draws near when his task must be ended, Republican and
Free-thoughted England assaults with impatient reproach; and out of the
abyss of her cowardice in policy and dishonour in trade, sets the hacks
of her literature to speak evil, grateful to her ears, of the Solitary
Teacher who has asked her to be brave for the help of Man, and just, for
the love of God.

_Denmark Hill,_
_25th November, 1871._

FOOTNOTES:

[7] _Political Economy of Art._ (Smith and Elder, 1857, pp. 65-76.)

[8] See report of speech of M. Jules Simon, in _Pall Mall Gazette_ of
October 27, 1871.

[9] The omitted sentences merely amplify the statement; they in no wise
modify it.

MUNERA PULVERIS.

"Te maris et terrae numeroque carentis arenae
Mensorem cohibent, Archyta,
Pulveris exigui prope litus parva Matinum
Munera."

CHAPTER I.

DEFINITIONS.

1. As domestic economy regulates the acts and habits of a household,
Political economy regulates those of a society or State, with reference
to the means of its maintenance.

Political economy is neither an art nor a science; but a system of
conduct and legislature, founded on the sciences, directing the arts,
and impossible, except under certain conditions of moral culture.

2. The study which lately in England has been called Political Economy
is in reality nothing more than the investigation of some accidental
phenomena of modern commercial operations, nor has it been true in its
investigation even of these. It has no connection whatever with
political economy, as understood and treated of by the great thinkers of
past ages; and as long as its unscholarly and undefined statements are
allowed to pass under the same name, every word written on the subject
by those thinkers--and chiefly the words of Plato, Xenophon, Cicero and
Bacon--must be nearly useless to mankind. The reader must not,
therefore, be surprised at the care and insistance with which I have
retained the literal and earliest sense of all important terms used in
these papers; for a word is usually well made at the time it is first
wanted; its youngest meaning has in it the full strength of its youth:
subsequent senses are commonly warped or weakened; and as all careful
thinkers are sure to have used their words accurately, the first
condition, in order to be able to avai