Principles of Political Economy Author:Henry Sidgwick Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: With this view I have been generally careful to avoid any dogmatic statements on practical points. It is very rarely, if ever, that the practical economic questi... more »ons which are presented to the statesman can be unhesitatingly decided by abstract reasoning from elementary principles. For the right solution of them full and exact knowledge of the facts of the particular case is commonly required; and the difficulty of ascertaining these facts is often such as to prevent the attainment of positive conclusions by any strictly scientific procedure. At the same time the function of economic theory in relation to such problems is none the less important and indispensable; since the practical conclusions of the most untheoretical expert are always reached implicitly or explicitly by some kind of reasoning from some economic principles; and if the principles or reasoning be unsound the conclusions can only be right by accident. For instance, if a practical man affirms that it will promote the economic welfare of England to tax certain of the products of foreign industry, a mere theorist should hesitate to contradict him without a careful study of the facts of the case. But if the practical person gives as his reason that " one-sided " free trade is not free trade at all," the theorist is then in a position to point out that the general arguments in favour of the admission of foreign products are mostly independent of the question whether such admission is or is not reciprocated. So again, if an enlightened farmer argues that, in the present agricultural depression, a restriction of freedom of contract and freedom of bequest is imperatively required, it would be presumptuous to affirm dogmatically on abstract principles of laissez- faire, that such restrictions are undesirable. But if the ...« less