system. Now, Adam Smith taught his followers to regard the advocates of that system as blind guides. His merciless criticism has been reproduced with self-satisfied applause, and in the fullest confidence that not only was there nothing to be said for the system under present conditions, but that, if its advocates had only been a little more "enlightened," there never would have been a single argument to be advanced in its favour. Dr. Cunningham's careful study of the objects which politicians set before themselves in the direction of trade and industry when these first became matters of public policy at all, effectually disposes of such suppositions. We can overrate the work even of Adam Smith. From any point of view, it is important that we should estimate it justly. The chief obstacle has hitherto been that even those who have taken him at first hand have not cared to go behind him. The principles, or rather the strange jumble of ideas, which he exposed, were as he represents them: his own theories were the product of his brain alone. It is most important, then, to have it pointed out to us so clearly and conclusively that Adam Smith entirely, if not deliberately, misrepresented the position of the thinkers and writers whom he so virulently attacked and so completely discredited. "The English mercantilists," says Dr. Cunningham (p. 434), "were considering how the power of this country might be promoted relatively to that of other nations. . . . Adam Smith, in criticizing them, persistently refuses to take their point of view. He assumes that they were trying to devise means for increasing wealth. . . as an end in itself, while every page of their writings showed that they were doing nothing of the kind." Their object, as the writer describes it again and again, was "the deliberate pursuit of national power" (p. 16), to be attained by "the accumulation of treasure, the increase of shipping, and management of industry and trade" (p. 101). In fact, the mercantilists were practical politicians, for whom political economy was a branch of statecraft (pp. 232, 261); their writers, one and all, had a practical aim with them, political economy was, to use the old distinction, emphatically an "art" (p. 227); "their labour, whether in criticizing the proposals of others or in gathering facts, was distinctly and consciously regarded as affording subsidiary helps to the great work of governing the country wisely."

Now, Dr. Cunningham's work will indeed have missed its mark if he has not succeeded in making us realize that even the mercantilist objects were susceptible of change, and liable to be influenced by circumstances. He has for us shifted their general endeavours from the accumulation of treasure, which we have been led to believe was their supreme object, to the enhancement of national power. In the

first volume, the reign of Richard II. was pointed to as the dividing line. Edward III.'s policy had aimed at "plenty; under his successor this was deliberately exchanged for the pursuit of "power," and the change was marked by the first Navigation Act. For the next two centuries the object of statesmen may generally be described as the accumulation of treasure by prohibition of export of bullion. But Elizabeth's reign inaugurates a change in methods, though not in the primary object. "Parliament. . . created a national machinery for the regulation of industry and commerce," which consisted of navigation laws and corn laws, regulations for industry and wages, incorporations of new manufactures, and new companies for trade, and a system for the relief of the poor (pp. 15, 16). These were not only possible, but necessary, because the environment was changed. The two central facts of European history, the discovery of America and the Reformation, had increased the fluidity of capital and labour. It was, as Professor Marshall has justly pointed out, a distinct advance when the idea of the balance of trade was substituted for that of the importance of the accumulation of bullion. The object of both was the same-the acquisition of treasure for the maintenance of national power; but the transition to the next stage was comparatively easy, for with the foundation of national debts the mere accumulation of treasure drops altogether out of sight, and the idea of the balance of trade lives on, not as a measure of the possible accumulations of treasure, but " as a criterion of the flourishing condition of our industry" (p. 423).

It was upon the mercantile system so altered and so reduced that Adam Smith sat in judgment. The mercantilists had at one time professed to believe in the antagonism of public and private interests. This feeling had become as attenuated as the desire for an accumulated treasure. From Sir James Stewart to Adam Smith was not so long a leap as we might at first sight fancy (p. 431). And yet, though the great work of the latter was not exactly of the kind that we often imagine it, none the less was it great. "Like all strokes of genius, what he did was extremely simple; and it was none the less a stroke of genius because the work of preceding writers had so far paved the way that the public were able to appreciate the merits of The Wealth of Nations at the moment when it appeared." What, then, Adam Smith exactly did was to isolate the conception of national wealth-to sever economics from politics; in short, to found the science of Economics. From the publication of The Wealth of Nations the fall of the mercantile system was merely a question of time; and Dr. Cunningham takes us as far as the repeal

of the Corn Laws, in 1846, with which he thinks that "the last remaining element of the mercantile system was removed" (p. 679). The theory of free trade, and the gradual removal of legislative impediments to the free circulation of capital and of labour, have signalled our return to the policy of Edward III.—that of plenty, as opposed to power. Meanwhile, Dr. Cunningham bids us notice the cosmopolitan tendencies of modern industry, the establishment of an international postage system, the ready migration of capital, and less ready but yet common migration of labour, the movements in favour of an international coinage.

This is but an imperfect sketch of an important book. The object has been merely to indicate the general framework of ideas on which the volume hangs, the principles of which the numerous branches of trade and commerce are the exposition and proof. These various branches are each treated separately in the book. Thus the timedivision is into practically five periods-the Elizabethan Age, the Stuarts, and the Struggle with France, under the three dates of (a) 1689–1776, (b) 1776-1815, (c) 1815-1846. Within each of these divisions there are seven subjects separately dealt with-Commerce, Colonies, Industry, Agriculture, the Poor, Taxation and Finance, and Economic Opinion. The book probably suffers from this extreme sub-division. Repetition, otherwise needless, is frequent. A subject cannot always be pursued to its natural conclusion. This seems to be especially the case in the last and perhaps the most interesting of the sub-divisions that devoted to Economic Opinion. In this particular point Dr. Cunningham's first volume suffered by comparison with Professor Ashley's admirable chapter on Mediæval Opinion. It is to be regretted that the fault was not remedied. The result is an appearance of weakness just where the matter is really strongest. It is all there, but so scattered, so difficult to piece together without a greater effort on the reader's part than should be necessary, that, except to the very careful student, it will largely fail of effect. It will be necessary to return to other divisions of the book on another occasion. For the present this short notice of the economic theory must suffice. With any defects, whatever they may be, there is no question that this volume is a most excellent and acceptable work.

D. J. MEDLEY.

CHRISTIAN ETHICS. By NEWMAN SMYTH, D.D. [x., 498 pp. 10s. 6d. Clark. Edinburgh, 1892.]

The appearance of an English work on Christian ethics is an event which calls for sympathetic notice in a Review which is concerned

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with the application of Christian principles to social life. I do not venture to say that this is the first English book on the subject. But I can scarcely be wrong in saying that at all events no English book dealing on any considerable scale with this subject (since the time of the seventeenth-century Anglican and Puritan casuists) has obtained anything like general recognition among English theological students. Before proceeding further, I may be allowed to dwell for a moment upon the startling character of this phenomenon. A clergyman is concerned with morality as much as with theology: he is a professed teacher of ethics as much as of theology. The Church which claims to be infallible claims to be infallible in morals as much as in matters of faith. Churches which do not profess to be infallible claim authority in morals as much as in matters of faith and at the present it will hardly be disputed, whatever view be taken of the relation between Christian doctrine and Christian morality, that the Church teaches Christian doctrine only as a means to Christian living. Under these circumstances one would naturally suppose that Christian morals would occupy as large a place in the studies of the Christian priesthood as Christian theology. Yet what do we find is the actual fact? By far the larger portion of the Anglican clergy take Holy Orders without having read a single theoretical work, even of the most elementary character, dealing with the question of morals at all; and that whether they have gone through a systematic training in theology or not. The candidate for Orders may or may not have read sermons and devotional treatises. He may or may not have attended lectures on parochialia, and heard or read a few notes on the ethical questions suggested by the Sermon on the Mount. But this, in all probability, is as near as he has come to the systematic study of Christian ethics, or indeed of any other ethics. If he is an Oxford passman, he will, moreover, have had the advantage of reading the first four books of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. If he belongs to the small minority of clergymen who have passed through the Honour School of Litteræ Humaniores at Oxford, or the Moral Sciences Tripos at Cambridge; or if he is an Honourman at Dublin who has taken up "ethics," or a Classical Honourman of Durham, he will, moreover, have more or less knowledge of both ancient and modern moral philosophy. But in the schools of theology proper, whether in the Universities or elsewhere (there may be a few lectures on the subject in some theological colleges, but I am not aware that there are), he has probably heard morality mentioned only either with the disparaging prefix "mere," as something that the religious man is to be warned against, or else as something which everybody sufficiently understands, and about which therefore nothing further need be said.

Nor is the deficiency I have noticed usually made up in later clerical life. Go into the library of a well-educated and intelligent clergyman. If his views incline in one direction, you may possibly find a book or two of Roman moral theology-S. Alphonso Liguori, for instance; if in another, a rather repellent-looking volume or two (probably unread, for indeed they are not very easy to read) of translated German books in Clarke's Theological Library. But of English books on Christian ethics not a vestige! And indeed we are hardly to be blamed for the hiatus. For the books (as I have indicated) simply do not exist. The philosophically trained minority have, indeed, their old "Greats " books. And, as things are at present, it is in these that the best instruction in Christian ethics is to be found. Nay, I will go further, and avow that no instruction in the subject seems to be capable of being made intellectually thorough that is not based on some fair knowledge of moral philosophy, and at least an elementary acquaintance with general philosophy. (The principle is well enough understood in Roman Seminaries.) But still there might be works dealing sensibly and systematically (if not profoundly) with practical questions of ethics without presupposing much philosophical culture; while those who have got some theoretical knowledge of ethics, as it is taught by moral philosophers of Christian mind as well as by their opponents, may naturally demand some help in adjusting what they have learned in the school of philosophy with that other aspect of morality which they encounter when it is presented to them as part of the content of Christian revelation.

What, then, is the province of Christian Ethics as distinct from general theology on the one hand, and from moral philosophy on the other? A complete treatise on the subject should (as I conceive it) deal with three main subjects :

(1) First, there would be some general discussion of the relation between Christian doctrine and Christian practice.

Theoretically, no doubt, Christian doctrine might be kept quite distinct from its practical application. A book might no doubt be written on the Trinity, or even upon the Incarnation, or the immortality of man, without entering upon the question what moral advantage there is in believing in God, or in Christ, or in a future life. Possibly some theological books might be pointed out which approximate to this ideal of purely dogmatic theology. But surely it will be admitted that this kind of treatment is not likely to be found very fruitful to a modern mind. And if no theology can advantageously be separated from its moral applications, it follows that moral theology (if I may be allowed to give a slight extension to the technical sense