But we must always avoid the snare into which the earlier economists fell, of assuming that their conclusions were rigid and absolutely correct. There can be no mechanical infallibility about Economics; it is not accurate enough to be mathematically true. It expresses tendencies. In a word, it is a psychological, not a physical science. Its subject is not wealth, simply, but human motive in regard to wealth.
Students of the Political Economy of Adam Smith, Ricardo, Bentham and James Mill, find that these great founders of economic science, in whose debt we shall ever remain, assumed too much mechanical uniformity in men’s actions, and did not give enough weight to the reaction of man upon his circumstances. They counted a man too much as a passively responsive machine. This is what led them to the doctrines since so seriously modified--the existence of a fixed Wages Fund, the “Iron Law of Wages,” the thesis that “A demand for Commodities is not a demand for Labour.”
John Stuart Mill began life under these influences, and his _Principles of Political Economy_ contain them; but in later life he abandoned his Wages Fund theory, gave greater weight to the human side, the variable and uncertain factor in economic problems, and under the influence of Comte and of the Socialists doubted the accuracy of much of his economic argument. This change was published in his review of the work of his friend Thornton, who had attacked the Wages Fund theory in 1869. It is in Mill’s collected Essays.
The Political Economy which Ruskin attacked was that of Mill’s _Principles_; and to judge fairly of the controversy we must treat the science, not as it was left, in high universal abstraction, by Ricardo; nor as worked up with rich historical material, cautious and well informed, as in Professor Marshall’s writings, but (between these) as Mill left it in his first edition of 1848.
In estimating the extent to which Ruskin’s attack was excusable, we need to know whether Mill overstepped the bounds of theory, of pure science--and became a political adviser and exhorter. This he certainly did, quite often in his book, and he says in his preface that it was part of his purpose to do so.
Ruskin says that it is when he is thus inconsistent with his own theory, and strays into practical teaching, that he begins to take any interest in him; and certainly Mill gave, precisely because he was a philanthropist and a social reformer, room for a critic to come in and say: “Lo, you pretend to be a practical guide to conduct, and you are only taking account of low and selfish motives; you are an unworthy exponent of human nature, if we are to regard you as taking it all for your province.” The chapters chiefly referred to here are those on “The Advantages of a Stationary State,” and on “The Futurity of the Labouring Classes.”