•The Mo THE MACMILLAN COMPANY MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. ECONOMICS 1750-1900 BY O. FRED BOUCKE PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS AT PENNSYLVANIA AUTHOR OF "THE LIMITS OF SOCIALISM" New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1921 All rights reserved PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA HB75 B73 Replacing 534819 COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Set up and printed. Published September, 1921. PREFACE The main purpose of this short history of economics as a science is to help students find a perspective for a large variety of facts whose connection and common ground may be easily lost sight of; and beyond that to show with some degree of definiteness how far economics even today rests on concepts worked out during the eighteenth century. To attain these two ends the writer has ignored some material that should properly have a place in a more comprehensive survey. He has decided to depart from custom and to treat, not individual writers or small groups of them, but only those currents of thought as a whole which differ in fundamentals, and have long since been recognised as of primary importance in the development of political economy. For this reason all systems have been reduced to four, and each system furthermore with the exception of Historism—has been subdivided into two parts, the first dealing with the presuppositions that were borrowed from philosophy, logic, ethics and psychology, and the second with definitions and laws such as have always formed the main body of economic doctrines. It will be found, of course, that this necessitated an overlapping of periods, besides at times making difficult the decision as to the division to which a writer should be assigned, considering the scope of his ideas and several modes of approach. But on the other hand, such a simplification has a distinct pedagogical value, provided we aim at an outline sketch rather than at 290620 |