E C O N hypothesis after hypothesis, and test each one by an appeal to the facts, but a man may easily spend his life in this sort of thing and still leave to his descendants nothing more than a legacy of rejected hypotheses. Every volume of records we look through contains a mass of detailed information on the economic life of England in the period we are studying. How much of it is relevant to the subject of inquiry 1 What is to be the principle of selection 1 How shall we determine the relative weight and importance of different kinds of relevant evidence! As in modern problems, so in those of past times, a man requires for success qualities quite distinct from those conferred by merely academic training and the use of scientific methods. A correct sense of proportion and the faculty of seizing upon the dominant factors in an historical problem are the result partly of the possession of certain natural gifts in which many individuals and some nations are conspicuously wanting, partly of general knowledge of the working of the economic and political institutions of the period we are studying, partly of what takes the place of practical experience in relation to modern problems, namely, detailed acquaintance with different kinds of original sources and the historical imagination by which we can realize the life and the ideals of past generations. These qualities are required all the more because, in order to make any further progress with such an inquiry as we have suggested, we have deliberately to make use of abstraction as an instrument of investigation. Let us see how this will work out. Suppose we have selected one of the numerous subsidiary problems suggested The plan of the general. inquiry, and obtained such full a geaeral° an(i complete information about one particular theory. industry that we can tabulate the wages of the workers for a long series of years. We may do the same for other industries, some of them coming under the Statute of Apprenticeship, others not. If all the industries belong to one economic area over which, so far as. we can tell from general statistics of wages and prices, and other information, fairly homogeneous conditions prevailed, we may be able to reach some useful conclusions as to the operation of the Act. But it would be absurd to suppose that we could reach those conclusions by simple reference to the trades themselves. We cannot assume that the fluctuations in wages were due to the action or inaction of magistrates without the most careful examination of the other influences affecting the trades. In economic affairs the argument post hoc propter hoc never leads to the whole truth, and is frequently quite misleading. We cannot suppose that the policy of the Merchant Adventurers’ Company had nothing to do with the woollen industry; that the export trade in woollen cloth was quite independent of the foreign exchanges and international trade relations in those times j that the effect on wages of tne state of the currency, the influx of new silver, the character of the harvests, and many other influences can be conveniently ignored. In studying, therefore, such an apparently simple question as the effect of an Act of Parliament on wages in a small group of trades we want a general theory which we can use as a kind of index of the factors we have to consider. We shall return to this subject later (see p. 646). It is sufficient to say here that all that we require is amply proDifticulties vided by readily-accessible works on economics. due to Assuming that we have in our minds this safeuar ^evldence Simportant d against loose thinking andof neglect of factors, the investigation the special problems arising out of the general inquiry resolves itself I into a careful definition of each problem we wish to deal With, and the collection, tabulation, and interpretation of
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the evidence. In most cases the interpretation of the facts is far from obvious, and we have to try several hypotheses before we reach one which will bear the strain of a critical examination in the light of further evidence. But at this stage in historical investigation it is generally the want of evidence of a sufficiently complete and continuous character, rather than difficulties of method, which forces us to leave the problem unsolved. It is, for instance, practically impossible to obtain reliable evidence as to the regularity of employment in any industry in the 17th century, and the best approximations and devices we can invent are very poor substitutes for what we really want. For this reason guess-work must continue to play an important part in economic history. But every genuine attempt to overcome its difficulties brings us into closer touch with the period we are examining; and though we may not be able to throw our conclusions into the form of large generalizations, we shall get to know something of the operation of the forces which determined the economic future of England; understand more clearly than our forefathers did, for we have more information than they could command, and a fuller appreciation of the issues, the broad features of English development, and be in a position to judge fairly well of the measures they adopted in their time. By comparing England with other countries we may be able in the distant future to reach conclusions of some generality as to the laws of growth, maturity, and decay of industrial nations. But, like the early statisticians of the 17th century, economic historians are the beginners of an art not yet polished, which time may bring to more perfection.” When we come to exclusively modern questions, there is no reason or necessity for a fundamental change of method. We cannot suppose that there occurred, Tbe }aves at or about the commencement of the 19th tigaUonS" century, a breach of historical continuity of such of modem a character that institutions, customs, laws, and questions. social conventions were suddenly swept away, the bonds of society loosened, and the state and people of England dissolved into an aggregate of competing individuals. The adoption of machinery gradually revolutionized the methods of production; but in the first instance only certain industries were affected, and those not at the same time or in the same degree ; old laws grown obsolete were repealed, but other laws affecting wage-earners and employers took their place, more complicated and elaborate than the Elizabethan code. Trade unions, so far from disappearing, were legalized, gathered strength from the changes in industrial organization, and nowhere became so powerful as in the most progressive industries; while other forms of combination appeared, incomparably stronger, for good or evil, than those of earlier times. But while we recognize these facts, we must not suppose that we have to study the action of men as though they were all enrolled in organized associations or covered by stringent laws which were always obeyed. There has never been in the history of English industry such licence as we find in certain directions in the earlier part of the 19th century. It is not in the decay of combination and monopoly or in the growth of competition that we must look for the distinctive characteristics of modern problems. A 17thcentury monopoly was a very weak and ineffective instrument compared with a modern syndicate; the Statute of Apprenticeship was certainly not so widely enforced as the “ common rules ” of trade unions; and many of the regulations of past times, which look so complicated to modern eyes, were conditions of free enterprise rather than restraints upon it. It is due to the influence of the laisser faire doctrine that we regard law and regulation as a restraint on liberty. As a maxim for guidance S. III. — 8i
