A FEW WORDS BY THE TRANSLATOR. for knowing, or supposing ourselves to know, a great many things; but most of us need to be reminded of much that we ought to know. The non-Catholic reader, if he has read the Holy Father's Encyclical, DE CONDITIONE OPIFICUM, can hardly fail to see in its complete accordance with this Treatise the oneness of the Catholic Church. BADDESLEY CLINTON, June 15th, 1891. TO THE READER. FIRST of all, kind reader, I wish to explain why it was that I wrote this little work. On the one hand, I saw that our young men, not only laymen, but clerics also, had need of initiation in economic science, because it is interwoven with almost all the affairs of civil life; whilst, on the other, I found no course of instruction fitted to be a safe guide for them. The earlier writers on Political Economy had their minds misled by the sensistic philosophy of their time; and philosophy, when bad, infects, being the root of them, all the other sciences. Those who came after followed their predecessors blindly, or, if they partly differed from them, wrote nevertheless under the influence of modern liberalism. Now, modern liberalism is like a blue-bottle fly. Wherever it settles, it leaves a germ of corruption and a bad smell. My intention, therefore, was to prepare something like a compendium of sound principles, that would TO THE READER. suffice to put young men on the right road, along which they might proceed safely. In carrying out that idea I have, as you will see, availed myself of the theories taught by the best professors, but not without freely discussing their doctrines and refuting their errors. That This book is not addressed to the learned. would have required greater powers and more knowledge. It is meant for aspirants and novices. Virginibus puerisque canto. I could have wished for more time to write it in; but my advanced age of nearly eighty years forbade me to expect that. ROME, January 1st, 1889. CONTENTS. II. Political Economy is both an Art and a Science III. Political Economy is a Practical Science IV. The cause of Wealth is properly attributable to the Utility of things, not to their Value |