It was also well known before, that work leads to wealth, andidleness to beggary; that private self-interest is the mostpowerful stimulus to active industry; and that he who desires toobtain young chickens, must not first eat the eggs.Certainlypeople had not known before that all this was political economy;but they were delighted to be initiated with so little trouble intothe deepest mysteries of the science, and thus to get rid of thehateful duties which make our favourite luxuries so dear, and toget perpetual peace, universal brotherhood, and the millennium intothe bargain.It is also no cause for surprise that so many learnedmen and State officials ranked themselves among the admirers ofSmith and Say; for the principle of 'laissez faire et laissezaller' demands no sagacity from any save those who first introducedand expounded it; authors who succeeded them had nothing to do butto reiterate, embellish, and elucidate their argument; and whomight not feel the wish and have the ability to be a greatstatesman, if all one had to do was to fold one's hands in one'sbosom? It is a strange peculiarity of these systems, that one needonly adopt their first propositions, and let oneself be ledcredulously and confidingly by the hand by the author, through afew chapters, and One is lost.We must say to M.Jean Baptiste Sayat the outset that political economy is not, in our opinion, thatscience which teaches only how values in exchange are produced byindividuals, distributed among them, and consumed by them; we sayto him that a statesman will know and must know, over and abovethat, how the productive powers of a whole nation can be awakened,increased, and protected, and how on the other hand they areweakened, laid to sleep, or utterly destroyed; and how by means ofthose national productive powers the national resources can beutilised in the wisest and best manner so as to produce nationalexistence, national independence, national prosperity, nationalstrength, national culture, and a national future.
This system (of Say) has rushed from one extreme view that theState can and ought to regulate everything -- into the oppositeextreme -- that the State can and ought to do nothing: that theindividual is everything, and the State nothing at all.The opinionof M.Say as to the omnipotence of individuals and the impotence ofthe State verges on the ridiculous.Where he cannot forbear fromexpressing a word of praise on the efficacy of Colbert's measuresfor the industrial education of France, he exclaims, 'One couldhardly have given private persons credit for such a high degree ofwisdom.'
If we turn our attention from the system to its author, we seein him a man who, without a comprehensive knowledge of history,without deep insight into State policy or State administration,without political or philosophical views, with merely one ideaadopted from others in his head, rummages through history,politics, statistics, commercial and industrial relations, in orderto discover isolated proofs and facts which may serve to supporthis idea.If anyone will read his remarks on the Navigation Laws,the Methuen Treaty, the system of Colbert, the Eden Treaty, &c.hewill find this judgment confirmed.It did not suit him to followout connectedly the commercial and industrial history of nations.
That nations have become rich and mighty under protective tariffshe admits, only in his opinion they became so in spite of thatsystem and not in consequence of it; and he requires that we shouldbelieve that conclusion on his word alone.He maintains that theDutch were induced to trade directly with the East Indies, becausePhilip II forbade them to enter the harbour of Portugal; as thoughthe protective system would justify that prohibition, as though theDutch would not have found their way to the East Indies without it.
With statistics and politics M.Say is as dissatisfied as withhistory: with the former because no doubt they produce theinconvenient 'facts which he says 'have so often provedcontradictory of his system' -- with the latter because heunderstood nothing at all of it.He cannot desist from his warningsagainst the pitfalls into which statistical facts may mislead us,or from reminding us that politics have nothing to do withpolitical economy, which sounds about as wise as if anyone were tomaintain that pewter must not be taken into account in theconsideration of a pewter platter.
First a merchant, then a manufacturer, then an unsuccessfulpolitician, Say laid hold of political economy just as a man graspsat some new undertaking when the old one cannot go on any longer.
We have his own confession on record, that he stood in doubt atfirst whether he should advocate the (so-called) mercantile system,or the system of free trade.Hatred of the Continental system (ofNapoleon) which had ruined his manufactory, and against the authorof it who had turned him out of the magistracy, determined him toespouse the cause of absolute freedom of trade.
