public revenue are factors in such a theory, but they are only factors. They are not the comprehensive theory itself. Logically, therefore, there is no more justification for interpolating the passages to which objection has been taken in a treatise on national revenue than there would be for smuggling them into a treatise on military and naval strategy, or for an excursus on the latter subjects in the discussion of the main question of public support of the military system. We maintain armies and navies partly to defend schools and churches, just as we maintain national revenue systems to furnish schools and churches with supplies. Questions of academic and ecclesiastical administration, however, are thrust altogether out of proportion and perspective, if they are made corollaries either of fiscal or of military theory.

Chapter II of Book V returns to distinctly technological method. It is, however, primarily descriptive rather than constructive. Its subject is: "The Sources of the General or Public Revenue of the Society." The substance of Part I of the chapter may be compressed into these propositions:

The revenue which must defray, not only the expences of defending the society and of supporting the dignity of the chief magistrate, but all the other necessary ex

pences of government, for which the constitution of the State has not provided any particular revenue, may be drawn either, first, from some fund which peculiarly belongs to the sovereign or commonwealth, and which is independent of the revenue of the people; or, secondly, from the revenue of the people.

The funds or sources of revenue which may peculiarly belong to the sovereign or commonwealth must consist, either in stock, or in land. The sovereign, like any other owner of stock, may derive a revenue from it, either by employing it himself, or by lending it. His revenue is in the one case profit, in the other interest.10

Public stock and public lands, therefore, the two sources of revenue which may peculiarly belong to the sovereign or comomnwealth, being both improper and insufficient funds for defraying the necessary expence of any great and civilized state; it remains that this expence must, the greater part of it, be defrayed by taxes of one kind or another; the people contributing a part of their own private revenue in order to make up a public revenue to the sovereign or commonwealth."

Throughout Book V, and notably in Part II of Chapter II, it gradually becomes plain that the whole basis of discussion has shifted from the purely economic, and has become the economic plus. Is that plus merely administrative expediency? Is the criterion of judgment which Smith applies merely a composite of economic and civic utility? Is the standard remotely and vaguely in

16 II, p. 342.

17 II, pp. 350, 351.

i

view economic and civic, with a further unformulated plus which is more intimately human?

I am inclined to think the third alternative is nearest the truth. It is certain that Smith does not pass judgment upon revenue devices solely for their bearing upon the production of national wealth. That is, the strictly and exclusively economic criterion with which the treatise started has been consciously or unconsciously retired, and a multiple criterion has taken its place. It is evident, too, that questions of administrative convenience are permitted now to turn the scale for or against possible programs. These are brought into a sphere of civic economy which overlies the sphere of productive economy, and sometimes vetoes maxims of conduct which productive economy alone would enforce.18 There also

18 The Wealth of Nations enthält eine Oekonomik und eine Politik, und es gehört zu den auffallendsten Thatsachen der Geistesgeschichte, dass man diesen letzteren Umstand bisher so gut wie ganz übersehen oder besser ignorirt hat" (Oncken, Smith und Kant, p. 14).

In the next paragraph Oncken continues: "Zwar umfasst die Smith'sche Staatslehre nur das letzte der fünf Bücher, aus welchen das ganze Werk besteht, aber dieses Buch füllt nahezu den dritten Theil des Wealth of Nations aus und enthält eine ausführliche Darlegung und Beurtheilung einerseits der Staatszwecke in ihren einzelnen Richtungen und andererseits der Staatsmittel. . . . . Wir haben es dabei mit einer abgerundeten Staatslehre zu thun, die nach eigenen von der Volks

hovers on the horizon a range of relations which are neither definitely economic nor civic. They have certain imperatives of their own which vaguely interpose themselves in estoppal of purely economic or civic programs, although they do not come out fairly into the open and give a distinct account of themselves. In these latter considerations the more widely moral in Smith's concep

wirthschaft unterschiedenen Gesichtspunkten gegliedert ist und eine Höhe des Standpunktes einnimmt, wie sie in manchen Dingen noch kaum von der Gegenwart (1877) eingeholt worden ist, ein Umstand, der vielleicht gerade die Schuld tragt, dass die Theorie bisher keine grössere Beachtung gefunden hat." Oncken seems to me to have judged Book V more favorably than it deserves. Smith had simply not thought through the distinctions that separate the problems of economics from those of civics; or, if he had, he did not organize his material accordingly. The fact that nearly one-half of the Lectures on Justice, etc., was virtually a preliminary sketch of The Wealth of Nations might perhaps have been cited by Oncken, if the book had appeared before he wrote, in support of his interpretation. It is, however, on the whole, in my judgment, evidence in favor of my view.

I am not so much inclined to take issue with Oncken's astute suggestion that the title of Smith's work should properly have been: "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth and Power of Nations." This suggestion is prompted by Smith's definition of political economy, Book II, Chapter V : "The great object of the political economy of every country is to increase the riches and power of that country." Granted that the inference is valid, my contention, that analysis of the problems was only in embryo in Smith's thought, and in the plan of the treatise, is all the stronger.

tions is vaguely asserting itself, but the fact of the assertion and its implications are too indefinite to make a decisive impression. We have a case of a more particular abstraction feeling its way toward correlation with a more general reality. Meanwhile the resultant is a predominant tendency to express the reality in terms of the abstraction rather than the reverse. This tendency held the balance of power, and still holds it, but there are credible signs that the balance of power is rapidly passing from the party of abstraction to the party of reality.

It is impossible to decide how much of Book V, Part II, Chapter II, is an exemplification of each of the tendencies above indicated. They are traceable in it in uncentered confusion. The fact is that we have in this chapter, not science of any sort, in the strict sense, but merely that more or less organized description of phenomena which is the necessary preliminary of science. The generalizations have the value of more or less probable hypotheses, and they foreshadow the differentiation of the various divisions of social science which shall be competent to test all the terms of the hypotheses.

Part II of Chapter II treats of taxes. As was intimated above, it is not to be regarded as the outline of a theory of taxation, whether the