account of human beings. There is honor among thieves; is there
none among merchants? Does not every man put some generous consideration
for others into his business-transactions? Has an honorable publisher
_no_ aim but to print that which will sell best? Has he _no_ regard to
the character of his house? Has he _no_ desire to furnish a nourishing
pabulum and a healthful inspiration to the mind of his country? In the
employment of labor and the giving of wages do men generally quite
forget the work_man_, and think only of the work and its profit? This
does not happen to accord with our observation of human nature. We think
there is a large element of honorable human feeling incessantly playing
into the economies of the world; and we think it might be yet larger
without any injurious perturbation of these economies.

Again, as a science, Political Economy considers wealth only as related
to wealth, to itself, not to man. It assumes wealth, as absolute, and
regards man as an instrument for its production and distribution. But
this attitude must be reversed. Wealth cannot be treated of in a wholly
healthful way until it is considered simply as instrumental toward the
higher riches which are contained in man himself.

And here we reach the peculiar virtue of Mr. Mill's book.

In the first place, he accepts the science as such, accepts it cordially
and almost with enthusiasm,--in fact, has a degree of faith in its
completeness and of confidence in its uses, greater, perhaps, than our
own final thought will justify; for the reader will already have
perceived that we incline in some measure to the opposition, with
Carlyle, Ruskin, and others. Proceeding upon this basis, Mr. Mill
expounds the orthodox theories with that definiteness of thought, with
that precision of statement, and that calmness and breadth of survey,
which never fail to characterize his literary labor. Any one who
assumes, and wishes to study the science, will find in this writer a
guide through its intricacies, whom it were hardly an exaggeration to
name as perfect. Always sound-hearted, always clear, candid, and
logical, always maintaining a certain judicial superiority, he is a
thinker in whose company one likes to go on his mental travels, and
whose thought one will be inclined to trust rather too much than too
little. In the second place, Mr. Mill discerns the limitations of the
science more clearly, and acknowledges them more frankly, than, to the
exte