em, disagreeable in their practical requirements, and people in
general pretend that they cannot understand, because they are unwilling
to obey them: or rather, by habitual disobedience, destroy their
capacity of understanding them. But there is not one of the really great
principles of the science which is either obscure or disputable,--which
might not be taught to a youth as soon as he can be trusted with an
annual allowance, or to a young lady as soon as she is of age to be
taken into counsel by the housekeeper.

I might, with more appearance of justice, be blamed for thinking it
necessary to enforce what everybody is supposed to know. But this fault
will hardly be found with me, while the commercial events recorded daily
in our journals, and still more the explanations attempted to be given
of them, show that a large number of our so-called merchants are as
ignorant of the nature of money as they are reckless, unjust, and
unfortunate in its employment.

The statements of economical principles given in the text, though I know
that most, if not all, of them are accepted by existing authorities on
the science, are not supported by references, because I have never read
any author on political economy, except Adam Smith, twenty years ago.
Whenever I have taken up any modern book upon this subject, I have
usually found it encumbered with inquiries into accidental or minor
commercial results, for the pursuit of which an ordinary reader could
have no leisure, and by the complication of which, it seemed to me, the
authors themselves had been not unfrequently prevented from seeing to
the root of the business.

Finally, if the reader should feel induced to blame me for too sanguine
a statement of future possibilities in political practice, let him
consider how absurd it would have appeared in the days of Edward I. if
the present state of social economy had been then predicted as
necessary, or even described as possible. And I believe the advance from
the days of Edward I. to our own, great as it is confessedly, consists,
not so much in what we have actually accomplished, as in what we are now
enabled to conceive.

CONTENTS.

LECTURE I.
PAGE
THE DISCOVERY AND APPLICATION OF ART 1

_A Lecture delivered at Manchester, July 10th, 1857._

LECTURE II.

THE ACCUMULATION AND DISTRIBUTION OF ART 70

_Continuation