..... PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH; COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY MACMILLAN AND CO. Set up and electrotyped October, 1893. Reprinted October, 1898. PREFACE. WHEN I was appointed in 1880 to the Chair of Political Economy in the University of Edinburgh I made several good resolutions. One that I kept was not to write out my lectures in full. With short notes it is much more easy to alter the material, and to adjust the emphasis according to the development of the subject or changes in affairs. To begin with, I took Mill's Principles of Political Economy as a text-book. Mill mastered and expressed with great lucidity and force of style all that he considered best in his predecessors, and if he was not very original himself, he has been the cause or occasion of originality in others. In England at any rate many of the recent changes in economic theory may be traced to the criticism or development of Mill's teaching. At the same time the abundance of these commentaries-to say nothing of the work of both foreign and English writers on independent lines has rendered Mill's treatment year by year less satisfactory as a survey of the whole subject, though it is still excellent for students who have time to trace the growth of economic thought. The present work is intended to cover the same ground as that of Mill. It has grown up out of my notes in the way described, and whilst presenting the older doctrines takes account also of subsequent modifications. It must be regarded, however, not so much as an abstract of the opinions of others as an independent attempt to recast the subject in the light of these opinions. |