604 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL Dictionnaire d'Economie Politique. To,q? XI. Tins volume contains several important articles. Probably the one to which readers will turn first is the article entitled Libert? ?conomique. It deals only with the lnost general aspects of the subject, which is more fully developed in special articles such as that dealing with Liberty of Exchange, which occupies twenty pages and is the most elaborate in this number. It is hardly necessary to say that the doctrine of both articles is scrupulously orthodox. The most im- maculate disciples of laissez-faire are to be found in the country of Colbert, just as the moqt precise Whigs are to be found in the country of Robespierre. The chief defect of these articles is a certain inability to recognize the real forces which, whether for good or for ill, are working at present against the idea of econolnic freedom. Thus the article on Economic Liberty tells us that the chief obstacle to its attainment lies in the traditional respect for the past. But surely the fiercest attacks on economic liberty proceed from .people guiltless of any respect for the past, from people who regard the past as one night- mare of folly and wickedness. So far as we can see the forces which make for State action in the field of conlmerce and industry are chiefly two. First national feeling, weak in the period when modern political economy took shape and strong in our own day, that national feeling which leads the modern state to aim at satisfying its own wants and becoming independent of its neighbouts. Secondly the progress of demoe. racy, which in the long run makes lnen care less for liberty. The love of liberty is an aristocratic passion, the instinct of the strong and proud, who neither like to be interfered with nor greatly care to interfere with others. But the orthodox econolnist loves to flog his dead home of tradition. In an age of universal suffrage he continues to declare against plutocrats, ministers and kings, and forgets that outside England the masses are mostly in fayour of Protection. Further he is apt to weaken his case by exaggeration. It is rather extravagant to say with the writer of the article on Liberty of Exchango that if the Navigation Acts were intended to weaken Holland they ought to be classed with such outrages as the partition of Poland. But blemishes of this kind should not hinder us from recognizing the wide range of reading and the fulness of information displayed in this article. The Articles Lure and Lois Sumptmtires, both by M. Coureellps de Seneuil, are sensible and agreeable to read, although rather slight in point of matter. The writer insists with justice upon the vague and varying signification of the term luxury, but he hardly attempts the interesting task of distinguishing the many objects which have been confounded under that term of reproach. The distinction between things injurious to body or mind and things harmless or beneficial; the distinction between things which do and things which do not exercise the higher faculties of those who produce them; the distinction
