Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900 edition. Excerpt: ... 0 CHAPTER I. IMITATION IN ECONOMICS. Political Economy during the Nineteenth Century--Mathematical treatment--Wealth the subject--Ambiguity of term--Value--Jevons and the Austrian School--Analysis of value--Mutual Convenience, the Law of Money-- Utility analytically insufficient--Supply in origin precedes Demand--Operation of Imitation--Tobacco -- Tea--Dr. Venner in 1650. Political Economy as a branch of science practically came into existence with the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. Adam Smith's great work, the Wealth of Nations, was indeed published in the year 1776, and there had been, prior to his time, many writers and thinkers upon cognate subjects, just as there were mighty men before Agamemnon; but though it was felt even from the first, amongst those best qualified to judge, that Smith's book marked the opening of a new era in Economics, and laid the foundation as a science of a most important branch of human thought, it nevertheless did not receive the full attention which it deserved from the general public of his day. The Wealth of Nations was, however, translated during the next decade into the languages of the great commercial countries of Europe. France and Switzerland, in the persons of Say and Sismondi, furnished able and ready workers in the same field, and the earlier half of the century, now drawing to a close, amply rectified the anomaly to which I have referred. It came indeed to be felt among philosophic minds as if a new world of thought had been laid open, and the science, especially during the second quarter of the century, came to be regarded by many thinking people as providing, if not a remedy for all the troubles of the body politic, at any rate a method of approaching and...
