ments, and it is necessary to rely largely upon historical cases which present now one and now another force or set of forces in peculiar prominence. The facts which show the difficulty of the task, however, have nothing to do with its nature.
According to this view of the matter there is no more reason to be satisfied with generalities in economics than in physics. Some writers on economic subjects, who pride themselves upon scientific reluctance, remind me of Mr. Brooks, in "Middlemarch." They believe in things up to a certain point, and are always afraid of going too far. They would be careful about the multiplication table, and not bear down too hard on the rule of three. They do not discriminate between care in the application of rules, and confidence in scientific results; or between harshness in personal relations and firm convictions in science. The more we come to understand economic science the more clear it is that we are dealing with only another presentation of matter and force, that is to say, with quantity and law, so that we have mathematical relations, and have every encouragement to severity and exactitude in our methods. When, therefore, it is said that the economists do not pay sufficient heed to the power of legislation, that is no stopping place for the argument any more than it would be in physics to say that sufficient heed was not paid to friction. The question would then arise: What is the force of legislation? Let us study it, just as we would go on to study friction in mechanics. When it is loosely said (as if that dismissed the subject) that men have passions and emotions and do not act by rule, the objection is not pertinent at all. It is connected with another wide and common, but very erroneous notion, that economic laws involve some stress of obligation on men to do or abstain from doing certain things. I suppose this notion arises from the classification of political economy amongst the moral
