Sociology [pp. 303-323]

THE PRINCE TONV RE VIEW.
its due relations to other social sciences, and this sign loses
none of its significance in spite of the crudeness and extravagance of the opinions of the historical economists, and in spite
of their very marked tendency to fall into dogmatism and hobbyriding. Political economy is thrown overboard by all groups
and persons whenever it becomes troublesome. When it got
in the way of Mr. Gladstone's land-bill he relegated it, by implication, to the planet Saturn, to the great delight of all the fairtraders, protectionists, soft-money men, and others who had
found it in the way of their devices. What political economy
needs in order to emerge from the tangle in which it it is now
involved, and to win a dignified and orderly development, is to
find its field and its relations to other sciences fairly defined
within the wider scope of sociology. Its laws will then take
their place not as arbitrary or broken fragments, but in due relation to other laws. Those laws will win proof and establishment from this relation.
For instance: We have plenty of books, some of them by able
writers, in which the old-fashioned Malthusian doctrine of population and the Ricardian law of rent are disputed because emigration, advance in the arts, etc. etc., can offset the action of
those laws, or because those laws are not seen in action in the
United States. Obviously no such objections ever could have
been raised if the laws in question had been understood or had
been put in their proper bearings. The Malthusian law of population and the Ricardian law of rent are cases in which, by rare and
most admirable acumen, powerful thinkers perceived two great
laws in particular phases of their action. With wider information it now appears that the law of population breaks the barriers of Malthus' narrower formula and appears as a great law
of biology. The Ricardian law of rent is only a particular application of one of the great conditions of production. We have
before us not special dogmas of political economy, but facts of
the widest significance for the whole social development of the
race. To object that these facts may be set aside by migration or
advance in the arts is nothing to the purpose, for this is only
altering the constants in the equation, which does not alter the
form of the curve, but only its position relatively to some standard line. Furthermore, the laws themselves indicate that they
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