hey fail to agree with the facts) to amend them,
according to the Method of Residues, by taking account of those
influential conditions which were omitted from the first draft of the
theory.

Whilst, however, this is usually the procedure of those inquirers who
have done most to give Economics its scientific character, to insist
that no other plan shall be adopted would be sheer pedantry; and Dr.
Keynes has shown, in his _Scope and Method of Political Economy_, that
Mill has himself sometimes solved economic problems by the Historical
Method. With an analysis of his treatment of Peasant Proprietorship
(_Political Economy_, B. II., cc. 7 and 8) we may close this section.
Mill first shows inductively, by collecting evidence from Switzerland,
Germany, Norway, Belgium, and France (countries differing in race,
government, climate and situation), that peasant proprietors are
superhumanly industrious; intelligent cultivators, and generally
intelligent men; prudent, temperate, and independent, and that they
exercise self-control in avoiding improvident marriages. This group of
empirical generalisations as to the character of peasant proprietors he
then deduces from the nature of the case: their industry, he says, is a
natural consequence of the fact that, however much they produce, it is
all their own; they cultivate intelligently, because for generations
they have given their whole mind to it; they are generally intelligent
men, because the variety of work involved in small farming, requiring
foresight and calculation, necessarily promotes intelligence; they are
prudent, because they have something to save, and by saving can improve
their station and perhaps buy more land; they are temperate, because
intemperance is incompatible with industry and prudence; they are
independent, because secure of the necessaries of life, and from having
property to fall back upon; and they avoid improvidence in marriage,
because the extent and fertility of their fields is always plainly
before them, and therefore how many children they can maintain is easily
calculated. The worst of them is that they work too hard and deny
themselves too much: but, over the greater part of the world, other
peasantry work too hard; though they can scarcely be said to deny
themselves too much; since all their labour for others brings them no
surplus to squander upon self-indulgence.

Sec. 7. The foregoing account of the Historical Method is based upon Mill's
di