But in the eighteenth century, a long course of events, which I shall hereafter trace, prepared the way for a spirit of improvement, and a desire for reform, of which the world had then seen no example. This great movement displayed its energy in every department of knowledge; and now it was that a successful attempt was first made to raise Political Economy to a science, by discovering the laws which regulate the creation and diffusion of wealth. In the year 1776, Adam Smith published his Wealth of Nations; which, looking at its ultimate results, is probably the most important book that has ever been written, and is certainly the most valuable contribution ever made by a single man towards establishing the principles on which government should be based. In this great work, the old theory of protection as applied to commerce, was destroyed in nearly all its parts;ss the doctrine of the balance of trade was not only attacked, but its falsehood was demonstrated; and innumerable absurdities, which had been accumulating for ages, were suddenly swept away.""

If the Wealth of Nations had appeared in any preceding century, it would have shared the fate of the great works of Stafford and Serra; and although the principles which it advocated would, no doubt, have excited the attention of speculative thinkers, they would, in all probability, have produced no effect on practical politicians, or, at all events, would only have exercised an indirect and precarious influence. But the diffusion of knowledge had now become so general, that even our ordinary legislators were, in some degree, prepared for these great truths, which, in a former period, they would have despised as idle novelties. The result was, that the doctrines of Adam Smith soon found their way into the House of Commons;60 and, being adopted by a few of the leading members, were listened to with astonishment by that great assembly whose been passed respecting trade, are collected in Barrington's Observations on the Statutes, pp. 279-285. Indeed, it was considered necessary that every parliament should do something in this way; and Charles II., in one of his speeches, says, "I pray, contrive any good short bills which may improve the industry of the nation .. and so God bless your councils." Parl. Hist. vol. iv. p. 291. Compare the remarks on the fishery-trade, in Somers Tracts, vol. xii. p. 33.

58 To this the only exception of any moment is the view taken of the usury-laws, which Jeremy Bentham has the honour of demolishing.

69 Before Adam Smith, the principal merit is due to Hume; but the works of that profound thinker were too fragmentary to produce much effect. Indeed Hume, notwithstanding his vast powers, was inferior to Smith in comprehensiveness as well as in industry.

60 The first notice I have observed of the Wealth of Nations in Parliament is in 1783; and between then and the end of the century it is referred to several times, and latterly with increasing frequency. See Parliamentary History, vol. xxiii. p. 1152, vol. xxvi. pp. 481, 1035, vol. xxvii. p. 385, vol. xxix. pp. 834, 905, 982, 1065, vol. xxx. pp. 330, 333, vol. xxxii. p. 2, vol. xxxiii. pp. 353, 386, 522, 548, 549, 563,

opinions were mainly regulated by the wisdom of their ancestors, and who were loth to believe that any thing could be discovered by the moderns which was not already known to the ancients. But it is in vain that such men as these always set themselves up to resist the pressure of advancing knowledge. No great truth, which has once been found, has ever afterwards been lost; nor has any important discovery yet been made which has not eventually carried every thing before it. Even so, the principles of Free Trade, as demonstrated by Adam Smith, and all the consequences which flow from them, were vainly struggled against by the most overwhelming majorities of both Houses of Parliament. Year by year the great truth made its way; always advancing, never receding. The majority was at first deserted by a few men of ability, then by ordinary men, then it became a minority, then even the minority began to dwindle; and at the present day, eighty years after the publication of Smith's Wealth of Nations, there is not to be found any one of tolerable education who is not ashamed of holding opinions which, before the time of Adam Smith, were universally received.

61

Such is the way in which great thinkers control the affairs of men, and by their discoveries regulate the march of nations. And truly the history of this one triumph alone, should be enough to repress the presumption of statesmen and legislators, who so exaggerate the importance of their craft, as to ascribe great results to their own shifting and temporary contrivances. For, whence did they derive that knowledge, of which they are always ready to assume the merit? How did they obtain their opinions? How did they get at their principles? These are the elements of their success; and these they can only learn. from their masters,-from those great teachers, who, moved by the inspiration of genius, fertilize the world with their discoveries. Well may it be said of Adam Smith, and said too without fear

774, 777, 778, 822, 823, 824, 825, 827, 1249, vol. xxxiv. pp. 11, 97, 98, 141, 142, 304, 473, 850, 901, 902, 903. It is possible that one or two passages may have been overlooked; but I believe that these are the only instances of Adam Smith being referred to during seventeen years. From a passage in Pellew's Life of Sidmouth, vol. i. p. 51, it appears that even Addington was studying Adam Smith in 1787. 61 In 1797, Pulteney, in one of his financial speeches, appealed to "the authority of Dr. Smith, who, it was well said, would persuade the present generation, and govern the next." Parl. Hist. vol. xxxiii. p. 778. In 1813, Dugald Stewart (Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol. ii. p. 472) announced that the doctrine of free trade has now, I believe, become the prevailing creed of thinking men all over Europe." And in 1816, Ricardo said, "The reasoning by which the liberty of trade is supported is so powerful, that it is daily obtaining converts. It is with pleasure that I see the progress which this great principle is making amongst those whom we should have expected to cling the longest to old prejudices." Proposals for an economical Currency, in Ricardo's Works, p. 407.

of contradiction, that this solitary Scotchman has, by the publication of one single work, contributed more towards the happiness of man, than has been effected by the united abilities of all the statesmen and legislators of whom history has preserved an authentic account.

The result of these great discoveries I am not here concerned to examine, except so far as they aided in diminishing the energy of the warlike spirit. And the way in which they effected this may be easily stated. As long as it was generally believed that the wealth of a country consists of its gold, it was of course also believed that the sole object of trade is to increase the influx of the precious metals: it, therefore, became natural that Government should be expected to take measures by which such influx could be secured. This, however, could only be done by draining other countries of their gold; a result which they, for precisely the same reasons, strenuously resisted. The consequence was, that any idea of real reciprocity was impossible: every commercial treaty was an attempt made by one nation to outwit another; every new tariff was a declaration of hostility; and that which ought to be the most peaceable of all pursuits, became one of the causes of those national jealousies and national animosities, by which war is mainly promoted.63 But when it was once clearly understood that gold and silver are not wealth, but are merely the representatives of wealth; when men began to see that wealth itself solely consists of the value which skill and labour can add to the raw material, and that money is of no possible use to a nation except to measure and circulate their riches; when these great truths were recognized, all the old notions respecting the balance of trade, and the supreme importance of the

64

Sir Theodore Janson, in his General Maxims of Trade, published in 1713, lays it down as a principle universally recognized, that "All the nations of Europe seem to strive who shall outwit one another in point of trade; and they concur in this maxim, That the less they consume of foreign commodities, the better it is for them." Somers Tracts, vol. xiii. p 292. Thus, too, in a Dialogue between an Englishman and a Dutchman, published in 1700, the Dutchman is represented as boasting that his government had "forced treaties of commerce exclusive to all other nations."Somers Tracts, vol. xi. p. 376. This is the system of "narrow selfishness" denounced by Dr. Story, in his noble work, Conflict of Laws, 1841, p. 32.

63 "It cannot, indeed, be denied, that mistaken views of commerce, like those so frequently entertained of religion, have been the cause of many wars and of much bloodshed." MCulloch's Principles of Political Economy, p. 140. See also pp. 37, 38: "It has made each nation regard the welfare of its neighbours as incompatible with its own; hence the reciprocal desire of injuring and impoverishing each other; and hence that spirit of commercial rivalry, which has been the immediate or remote cause of the greater number of modern wars."

64 On the rapid diffusion during the present century of the principles worked out by the economists, compare Laing's Sweden, pp. 356-358, with a note to the last edition of Malthus on Population, 1826, vol. ii. pp. 354, 355.

precious metals, at once fell to the ground. These enormous errors being dispersed, the true theory of barter was easily worked out. It was perceived, that if commerce is allowed to be free, its advantages will be shared by every country which engages in it; that, in the absence of monopoly, the benefits of trade are of necessity reciprocal; and that, so far from depending on the amount of gold received, they simply arise from the facility with which a nation gets rid of those commodities which it can produce most cheaply, and receives in return those commodities which it could only produce at a great expense, but which the other nation can, from the skill of its workmen, or from the bounty of nature, afford to supply at a lower rate. From this it followed, that, in a mercantile point of view, it would be as absurd to attempt to impoverish a people with whom we trade, as it would be in a tradesman to wish for the insolvency of a rich and frequent customer. The result is, that the commercial spirit, which formerly was often warlike, is now invariably pacific." And although it is perfectly true that not one merchant out of a hundred is familiar with the arguments on which these economical discoveries discoveries are founded, that does not prevent the effect which the discoveries themselves produce on his own mind. The mercantile class is, like every other, acted upon by causes which only a few members of that class are able to perceive. Thus, for instance, of all the innumerable opponents of protection, there are very few, indeed, who can give valid reasons to justify their opposition. But this does not prevent the opposition from taking place. For an immense majority of men always follow with implicit submission the spirit of their own time; and the spirit of the times is merely its knowledge, and the direction that knowledge takes. As, in the ordinary avocations of daily life, every one is benefited, in the increase of his comforts, and of his general security, by the progress of many arts and sciences, of which perhaps he does not even know the name, just so is the mercantile class benefited by those great economical discoveries which, in the course of two generations, have already effected a complete change in the commercial legislation of this country, and which are now operating slowly, but steadily, upon those other European states, where,

es "The feelings of rival tradesmen, prevailing among nations, overruled for centuries all sense of the general community of advantage which commercial countries derive from the prosperity of one another; and that commercial spirit, which is now one of the strongest obstacles to wars, was during a certain period of European history their principal cause." Mill's Political Economy, 1849, vol. ii. p. 221. This great change in the feelings of the commercial classes did not begin before the present century, and has not been visible to ordinary observers until the last five-andtwenty or thirty years; but it was foretold in a remarkable passage written by Her der in 1787: see his Ideen zur Geschichte, vol. iii. pp. 292, 293.

public opinion being less powerful, it is more difficult to establish great truths and extirpate old abuses. While, therefore, it is perfectly true, that among merchants, a comparatively small number are acquainted with political economy, it is not the less true that they owe a large part of their wealth to the political economists; who, by removing the obstacles with which the ignorance of successive governments had impeded trade, have now settled on a solid foundation that commercial prosperity which is by no means the least of our national glories. Most assuredly is it also true, that this same intellectual movement has lessened the chance of war, by ascertaining the principles which ought to regulate our commercial relations with foreign countries; by proving, not only the inutility, but the positive mischief, caused by interfering with them; and finally by exploding those long-established errors, which, inducing men to believe that nations are the natural enemies of each other, encouraged those evil feelings, and fostered those nationaĺ jealousies, to the strength of which the military spirit owed no small share of its former influence.

The third great cause by which the love of war has been weakened, is the way in which discoveries respecting the application of Steam to the purposes of travelling have facilitated the intercourse between different countries, and thus aided in destroying that ignorant contempt which one nation is too apt to feel for another. Thus, for instance, the miserable and impudent falsehoods which a large class of English writers formerly directed against the morals and private character of the French, and, to their shame be it said, even against the chastity of French women, tended not a little to embitter the angry feelings then existing between the two first countries of Europe; irritating the English against French vices, irritating the French against English calumnies. In the same way, there was a time when every honest Englishman firmly believed that he could beat ten Frenchmen: a class of beings whom he held in sovereign contempt, as a lean and stunted race, who drank claret instead of brandy, who lived entirely off frogs; miserable infidels, who heard mass every Sunday, who bowed down before idols, and who even worshipped the Pope. On the other hand, the French were taught to despise us, as rude unlettered barbarians, without either taste or humanity; surly, ill-conditioned men, living in an unhappy climate, where a perpetual fog, only varied by rain, prevented the sun from ever being seen; suffering from so deep and inveterate a melancholy, that physicians had called it the English spleen; and, under the influence of this cruel mala