a multitude of minds
into the conception of what political economy is, and how it concerns
everybody living in society. Beyond this there is no merit of a high
order in the work. It popularised in a fresh form some doctrines and
many truths long before made public by others.' James Mill, one of the
acutest economists of the day, and one of the most vigorous and original
characters of that or any other day, had foretold failure; but when the
time came, he very handsomely admitted that his prophecy had been rash.
In after years, when Miss Martineau had acquired from Comte a conception
of the growth and movement of societies as a whole, with their economic
conditions controlled and constantly modified by a multitude of other
conditions of various kinds, she rated the science of her earlier days
very low. Even in those days, however, she says: 'I believe I should not
have been greatly surprised or displeased to have perceived, even then,
that the pretended science is no science at all, strictly speaking; and
that so many of its parts must undergo essential change, that it may be
a question whether future generations will owe much more to it than the
benefit (inestimable, to be sure) of establishing the grand truth that
social affairs proceed according to general laws, no less than natural
phenomena of every kind' (_Autob._ ii. 245).

Harriet Martineau was not of the class of writers, most of them terribly
unprofitable, who merely say literary things about social organisation,
its institutions, and their improvement. Her feeling about society was
less literary than scientific: it was not sentimental, but the
business-like quality of a good administrator. She was moved less by
pity or by any sense of the pathos and the hardness of the world, than
by a sensible and energetic interest in good government and in the
rational and convenient ordering of things. Her tales to illustrate the
truths of political economy are what might be expected from a writer of
this character. They are far from being wanting--many of them--in the
genuine interest of good story-telling. They are rapid, definite, and
without a trace of either slovenliness or fatigue. We are amazed as we
think of the speed and prompt regularity with which they were produced;
and the fertile ingenuity with which the pill of political economy is
wrapped up in the confectionery of a tale, may stand as a marvel of true
cleverness and inventive dexterity. Of course, of imagin