Unfortunately, an economist of the highest distinction introduced a fatal change in the fundamental conception of the science, which has thrown it into utter confusion, and has arrested its progress up to the present time, but from which all the most independent economists in the world are now emancipating themselves.

All interest in political economy died out among our bright but fickle neighbours in 1776, when Turgot was driven from power. Condillac's work, which was published in that year, never attracted the slightest attention.

In 1803, J. B. Say published his first treatise on political economy, in which he defined it as the production, distribution, and consumption of wealth, but unfortunately he quite departed from the original meaning of that expression, which was one and indivisible, and meant nothing but commerce or exchange.

J. B. Say broke up the expression into its separate terms, and completely changed the original meaning of production and consumption; for while the original meaning of production was offering for sale, and consumption meant simply purchasing, J. B. Say used production to mean adding value to anything and consumption to mean the destruction of value. He also has separate and independent chapters on production, distribution, and consumption.

Now, if you will think for an instant, you will see that so long as you retain commerce as the fundamental concept of economics, it is a positive, distinct, and intelligible science, the fundamental law of which is the law of value. But when you break it up into three parts, you will see that it becomes utterly unintelligible as a distinct science. It breaks the back of the whole science: it utterly breaks the back of the theory of value.

I will now show the awkwardness of adopting that view of the science.

Say himself designates instruments of credit, such as bank notes and bills of exchange, the funds, the copyright of a book, a professional practice, etc, as wealth.

Now, how is it possible to talk of the production, distribution, and consumption of bank notes, bills of exchange, the funds, a copyright, or a professional practice? But it is quite usual to buy and sell them.

J. B. Say has earnestly enforced the doctrine that abilities of all sorts are wealth. He terms them immaterial wealth.

How is it possible to talk of the production, distribution, and consumption of human abilities? But they have a value which is measured in money. It is quite usual to speak of the supply and demand of labour.

J. B. Say's work has for nearly half a century moulded the Continental view of political economy, and most of the usual manuals and treatises are little more than adaptations from it, with little variation.

Among others, M. Say has in a general way moulded the form of Mill's treatise, though no doubt he varies from him to a certain extent.

Mill treats political economy as the production, distribution, and exchange of wealth. Now, in the original language of the economists, that is simply exchange and exchange.

Mill's book, which, in a modified form, introduced Say's system into England, was published in 1848, and was immediately received with unbounded applause, and was supposed to have brought political economy to its highest pitch of perfection; and for many years it was considered to be as futile to criticise Mill as to criticise infalibility itself. Whatever Mill asserted was to be at once accepted without doubt or question.

Now, Mill is a professed writer on logic, and we should naturally expect that so distinguished a logician would at least be consistent with himself.

In an eloquent passage in his logic he shows the prime necessity of settling the fundamental concepts of a science. We might naturally expect, therefore, that he would take especial care to settle the definitions of economics, especially such a deeply-contested one as wealth. After the very first paragraphs of his work it is, therefore, rather surprising to read, "Every one has a notion sufficiently correct for common purposes of what is meant by wealth;" and he says, "It is no part of the design of this treatise to aim at metaphysical nicety of definition where the ideas suggested by a term are already as determinate as practical purposes require."

Let us now see whether Mill himself has any clear idea of what wealth is. A little further on he says, "Everything forms, therefore, a part of wealth which has a power of purchasing." Here at last, after 2,100 years, we have exactly Aristotle's definition of wealth, which ancient writers held unanimously for 1,300 years - that everything which can be bought and sold, or whose value can be measured in money, is wealth. This definition manifestly includes all the three orders of exchangeable quantities : (1) material things; (2) personal qualities, both as labour and credit; and (3) abstract rights.

But at the end of the same remarks he says, "The production of wealth, the extraction of the instruments of human subsistence and enjoyment from the materials of the globe." Is not that a very startling change of conception? Is everything which can be bought and sold extracted from the materials of the globe? Are personal qualities, are bank notes, bills of exchange, personal credit, and banking credits extracted from the materials of the globe?

After going on for more than fifty pages, Mill comes to produc. tive labour, which, he says, is labour productive of wealth; and then it suddenly strikes him that he has at last to inquire what wealth really is.

He then says that it "is essential to the idea of wealth to be susceptible of accumulation," and that permanence is necessary to wealth. Now, here is at once another change of idea, and it at once excludes labour from the term "wealth." Labour perishes in the very instant it is performed. We can accumulate the products of labour, but we cannot accumulate labour itself; or at least, the only person who could probably accumulate labour itself would be the Philosopher of Laputa, who bottled sunshine.