A HISTORY OF
ECONOMIC DOCTRINES
FROM THE TIME OF THE PHYSIOCRATS
TO THE PRESENT DAY
BY CHARLES GIDE
PROFESSOR OF SOCIAL ECONOMICS IN THE
FACULTY OF LAW UNIVERSITY OF PARIS
AND
CHARLES RIST
PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE
FACULTY OF LAW IN THE UNIVERSITY OF
MONTPELLIER
AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE SECOND REVISED
AND AUGMENTED EDITION OF 1913
UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE LATE
PROFESSOR WILLIAM SMART
BY
R. RICHARDS B.A.
LECTURER IN THE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF
NORTH WALES
D. C. HEATH AND COMPANY
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
DALLAS ATLANTA LONDON SAN FRANCISCO
All rights reserved
Printed in Great Britain at The Ballantyne Press by
Spottiswoode, Ballantyne & Co. Ltd.
Colchester, London & Eton
Gide’s Principles of Political Economy, of which there are severaltranslations, is probably better known to English students thanany similar work of foreign origin on the subject, and manyreaders of that book will welcome an opportunity of perusing thisvolume which Professor Gide has produced in collaboration withProfessor Rist.
The remarkable dearth of literature of this kind in Englishmay be pleaded in further extenuation of the attempt to presentthe work in an English garb, and readers of the Preface will beable to contrast the position in this country with the verydifferent condition of things prevailing across the Channel. Thecontrast might even be carried a stage farther, and it wouldbe interesting to speculate upon the historical causes whichhave made Germany supreme in the field of economic researchand history, which influenced France in her choice of thehistory of theory, and which decreed that England should onthe whole remain faithful to the tradition of the “puredoctrine.” Can it be that something like a “territorialdivision of labour” applies in matters intellectual as well aseconomic?
Be that as it may, we can hardly pretend to be satisfied with theposition of our country in this matter of doctrinal history. Of thenine names mentioned in the Preface, only two are English, namely,Ashley and Ingram; and it is no disparagement to Ashley’s illuminatingstudy of mediæval England to say that the main interest ofhis work is not doctrinal, and that Cunningham’s name might withequal appropriateness have been included in the list.
Omitting both Ashley and Cunningham, whose labours have beenlargely confined to the realm of economic history, we are thus leftwith Ingram’s short but learned work as the sole contribution ofEnglish scholarship to the history of economic thought.
English readers may possibly be puzzled by the omission ofany references, except a stray quotation or two, to Cannan’s Historyof the Theories of Production and Distribution. But the microscopiccare with which the earlier theories are examined and elucidated inthat work h