On this page
-
Text (2)
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
leaves opinions as his judgment directs after an extensive survey of the works which have issued from various schools * He goes a freat way with Adam Smith , of course ; a great way with Say , Licardo , Malthus , and Mill ; combining their leading opinions into a system with which we have only trivial faults to find . Our great objection is to his deficiencies of arrangement . We cannot ,
indeed , discover any principle of arrangement ; and cannot but wonder that , much as he admires Mill , he should not have followed his , which appears to us the natural , and therefore palpably fit mode of evolving the principles of the science ; namely , by classing them under the heads production , distribution , and consumption , —interposing exchange if it should be thought desirable to treat separately of this method of distribution .
We must gratify ourselves by giving one extract , in . which is implied a valuable sanction of our preceding arguments . * Much difficulty and deplorable mistake has arisen on the subject of political economy from the propensity that has prevailed of considering a nation as some existing * intelligent being * , distinct from the individuals who compose it , and possessing properties belonging to no individual who is a member of it . We seem to think that national
morality is a different thing from individual morality , and dependent upon principles quite dissimilar ; and that maxims of political economy have nothing in common with private economy . Hence the moral entitythe grammatical being called a nation , has been clothed in attributes that have no real existence except in the imagination of those who metamorphose a word into a thing , and convert a mere grammatical
contrivance into an existing and intelligent being . It is of great importance that we should be aware of this mistake : that we should consider abstract terms as names , invented to avoid limitation , description , and periphrasis—grammatical contrivances and no more ; just as we use the signs and letters of algebra to reason with , instead of the more complex numbers they represent .
'I suspect it will be very difficult for us to discover a rule of morality , obligatory on individuals , that would not apply to nations considered as individuals ; or any maxim of political economy that would not be equally undeniable as a rule of private and domestic economy ; and vice versd . The more effectually we can discard mystery from
this and every other subject , the more intelligible it will become ; and the less easy will it be for designing men of any description to prey upon the credulity of mankind . It is high time that the language arid the dictates of common sense , founded upon propositions easy to be understood and easy to be proved , should take place of the jargon by which our understandings have been so long cheated .
4 Those maxims of human conduct that are best calculated to promote a man ' s highest and most permanent happiness on the whole of his existence , are the on ) y maxims of conduct obligatory on individuals . There is no other rational basis of moral obligation ; for what can be put in competition with the greatest sum of happiness upon the whole of a man ' s existence ? There are no rules of morality—there is no such thing as virtue or vice , but what originated from our connexion With other creatures whose happiness may , in some degree , be affected
Untitled Article
On the Duty of Studying Political Economy . &J
Untitled Article
No . 01 . D
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1832, page 33, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1804/page/33/
-