Two lectures on the conditions of health and wealth educationally considered / by W.B. Hodgson.

  • Hodgson, W. B. (William Ballantyne), 1815-1880.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Two lectures on the conditions of health and wealth educationally considered / by W.B. Hodgson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    quickest, but not the surest or safest way. No doubt, theft is liable to the danger of detection and punishment. But this might be greatly diminished by increased prudence and dex- terity. And apart from direct, actual stealing, there are other and less perilous modes of enriching one’s individual self rapidly, such as gambling, adulteration of commodities, or fraudulent use of trade-marks, or of short measures or weights, or trading recklessly with others’ money, which has been intrusted to one on account of sanctimonious and philan- thropic pretensions, as did that Sir John , who robbed Peter to pay himself, and who, but for “ adverse fortune,” might possibly have gone to his grave a rich man, and a re- puted saint, without loss even to those whose money he had turned to his own account. To these, and all such practices, what has Economic Science to say ? Does it inculcate, approve, connive at, or repudiate and condemn them? It condemns them all, and why? Simply because it is its province to teach men how to enrich themselves only in so far, and in such way, as the profit of the individual redounds to the profit of the community* The man who enriches himself, as by stealing or gambling, at others’ expense, or even without advantage to the community, is outlawed from the economic pale as a rebel against its fundamental law. The agriculturist, the manufacturer, the merchant, and many more besides, confer services on the community, of which the remuneration to themselves is the index and the measure. But the thief and the gambler waste the resources of the community, and do not even merely transfer them from hand to hand. Here, then, you have the key to the true nature of Economic Science. It does not, as the first objection alleged, concern itself with the enrichment of the community, to the neglect of the individuals of whom the community is made up. . Neither does it, as the second objection alleges, aim at enriching the individual apart from the community to which he belongs. It i *< jn reference to Lamartine's vague but mischievous talk in reply to an address bv a society of political economists—1 Ancient science tended only to render individuals wealthu, but our new science will apply itself to make the entire people rich,’ Mr. Sargant well observes—1 The very name might have taught L.martine that the aim of the society was far different from the art of rendering individuals wealthy.”’—Social Innovators and their Schemes, c. vi. s. iii. p. 373. 1838.