History of Economic Analysis part 20 doc

The seventeenth-century publications of this type often contain rudimentary economic arguments. See, for example, John Roberts, The Trades Increase (1615), and Lewes Roberts, The Merchants Mappe of Commerce (1638). In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries we find, on the one hand, a rich crop of monographs, especially on banks, some of which will have to be noticed later on, and, on the other hand, comprehensive compilations. We must mention Jacques Savary’s Le parfait negociant (1675), which proved its vitality by going through new editions until 1800 and seems to me to repeat, on a larger scale, the performance of G.D.Peri, Il Negotiante (1638–65) and the still earlier one of B. Cotrugli Raugeo, Della Mercatura e del mercante perfetto (1573); and Savary’s son’s (Jacques Savary des Bruslons) Dictionnaire universel du commerce…(finished and published by his brother Philémon-Louis, 1723–30). Malachy Postlethwayt’s Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce (1751–5), though based upon the latter, is by no means a mere translation of it, as has sometimes been asserted (on the differences, see E.A.J.Johnson, Predecessors of Adam Smith, 1937, Appendix B. The same author, in the same work, Appendix C, also reduced to its proper proportions the charge of plagiarism that has been frequently leveled against Postlethwayt, though the case remains bad enough). Neither of these dictionaries is, however, primarily concerned with what we call economics. Both were meant to serve the merchant’s practical needs and deal with economic problems only incidentally. This is the difference in principle that, apart from the statistical complement, separates these ventures from later similar ones, especially from McCulloch’s Dictionary, Practical, Theoretical, and Historical of Commerce and Commercial Navigation (1832). III. It is with misgivings that I also exclude the literature on husbandry (farm management, agrarian technology) and forestry; the exclusion of other technological material need not cause qualms, though some writers, for instance writers on the technological aspects of mining, also dealt with economic subjects (see G.Agricola, De re metallica, 1556, later translated into German, an apparently highly successful treatise). The development of the literature on husbandry during the period may be briefly sketched as follows. In the thirteenth century there was a group of English writers—nobody has so far been able to link them up with either predecessors or History of economic analysis 152 immediate successors—who produced several remarkable works on estate management and farming (translated from Norman French and critically edited for the Royal Historical Society by Miss Elizabeth Lamond, 1890); it suffices to mention a treatise on Husbandry, written before 1250 and attributed to Walter of Henley. Disregarding this group, we find active interest in these matters from the fifteenth century on, when new editions of the Roman agriculturalists (Scriptores rei rusticae, the earliest edition I have seen is dated 1472), Columella in particular, seem to have been eagerly demanded. A new spirit of commercialism in agriculture—associated with the upheavals in the social structure of the countryside—then produced everywhere a literature that aimed at teaching those new methods of production, the introduction of which is usually referred to as the Agrarian Revolution. In England, there is a continuous development from Fitzherbert’s Boke of Husbondrye (1523), to Weston’s Discours of Husbandrie used in Brabant and Flanders (1650), to Worlidge’s Systema agriculturae (1669), Mortimer’s Whole Art of Husbandry (1707), and Jethro Tull’s Horse-Houghing Husbandry (1731), which stands at the fountainhead of an outburst of literary activity that lasted throughout the eighteenth century and, in a sense, culminated in Arthur Young’s copious writings (see, e.g., his Rural Economy, 1770, and his periodical, the Annals of Agriculture). This literature dealt with a wide range of topics from enclosures to drainage, drilling, crop rotation, turnips and clover, and cattle breeding. On the Continent, the Dutch led in agricultural practice, but the Italians in the literature of the subject. Let us notice as a forerunner, as yet substantially under the influence of the ancients, P.de Crescenzi (Opus ruralium commodorum, I only know the edition of 1471) and then A.Gallo (Dieci giornate della vera agricoltura, 1566), G.B.della Porta (1583), and especially the strikingly original Camillo Tarello (Ricordo di agricoltura, 1567, but I only know an edition of 1772), who in important points anticipated the development of almost two centuries. Of German contributions, we shall notice Heresbach’s Rei rusticae libri quatuor (1570, first translated into English, 1577) and the work of Colerus (see above). Developments were then interrupted, but were resumed by the end of the seventeenth century to run on steadily to the writings on rural economy of J.C.Schubart (1734–87), whom Emperor Joseph II ennobled with the significant title of ‘Cloverfield.’ The Spaniard, G.A.de The consultant administrators 153 Herrera (Libro de agricultura…new ed. 1563), and the Frenchmen, Charles Estienne (L’Agriculture et maison rustique, 1570; Italian trans. 1581; I do not know the original) and Oliver de Serres (Théâtre d’agriculture, 1600) should also be mentioned. This attempt to locate the early landmarks must suffice, although this literature contributed considerably to the formation of some of the habits of thought that are most characteristic of modern economics. The same is true of the literature on forestry, into which I have not been able to go at all. It is worth noting, however, that forestry remained a recognized division of German treatises on general economics right into the nineteenth century. IV. Description by travelers of the economic conditions they observed in foreign and even in their own countries forms an important part of the economic literature in the period under discussion, owing to the absence of regular reporting by permanent agencies. This method of reporting on facts and interpreting them was done on very different levels that range from stray observations to careful analyses, occasionally involving considerable bits of theory. Neglect of this literature is apt to distort seriously our picture of the economics of those centuries and in particular to hide the full extent of the fact-finding work that was actually done. Nevertheless, we have no choice but to exclude this literature. It must suffice to mention two famous English samples which will repay perusal: Sir William Temple’s Observations upon the United Provinces (1672; 3rd augmented ed. 1676), which presents conditions in the Netherlands from the standpoint of a definite philosophy of wealth (that centers on ‘frugality and industry’), and Arthur Young’s reports on his various tours and travels (most important in this connection: Travels…with a view to ascertaining the Cultivation, Wealth Resource, and National Pros-perity of the Kingdom of France, 1792), which contain a lot of what might be termed ‘theory in action.’ [J.A.S. intended to have this discussion of the Excluded Material set up in small type as being of interest only to the specialist. Many of the books mentioned he examined in the Kress Library (Harvard School of Business Administration), which seemed both to him and to the Editor to be a kind of scholars’ Paradise. To Professor Alexander Gerschenkron I owe the information that Georg Agricola’s De re metallica (mentioned above, III) was translated into English by Herbert Clark Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover (1912; new ed. 1950).] History of economic analysis 154 [(b) The Consultant Administrators.] The authors of the remaining material we shall divide into two clearly, if only broadly, distinct groups. We shall call them the Consultant Administrators 1 and the Pamphleteers. Among the Consultant Administrators, teachers and writers of more or less systematic treatises form a subgroup that is relatively easy to delimit. In that paradise of bureaucracy there was, of course, a steady demand for the instruction of young men who were preparing themselves for the public-service career—or of older men who wished to improve their equipment—particularly in Germany and Italy. In the course of the eighteenth century, professorial chairs began to be provided for the teaching of what was described, in Germany, as Cameral Science or Science of the State (Staatswissenschaft) and what may be more accurately described as Principles of Economic Administration and Policy (in German, Polizeiwissenschaft). 2 Thenceforth those treatises were to a large extent simply textbooks and the products of academic lectures. The same need, however, had asserted itself much earlier, and systematic treatises of pedagogical interest had been written in all continental countries long before economics as a distinct field received the official recognition implied in the foundation of those professorships. But from the fifteenth century on, first in Italy then elsewhere, public administrators of all ranks and types—great noblemen as well as humble drudges—began to put on paper their ideas about how the government and the economy of their countries should be run and especially how their finances should be managed. These administrators were practitioners, familiar with the business of governing, and most of them were laics. Their books, reports, and memoranda thus differ characteristically from the works of the schoolmen and the philosophers of natural law. It is true that they also differ from those of the teachers. 1 This term roughly covers the same type as does the Spanish term políticos. In the German literature the word in general use is Cameralist or Kameralist (derived from the territorial treasuries, the camerae). But it carries a misleadingly narrow association and in addition would not serve our purpose, which is to label a group that includes the German type but is not confined to it. Histories and bibliographies of German Cameralist literature were published as early as 1758 by J.J.Moser and 1781–2 by K.G.Rössig (Versuch einer pragmatischen Geschichte der Ökonomie, Polizei und Kameralwissenschaft). Much help has been derived from R.von Mohl, Geschichte und Literatur der Staatswissenschaften (1855–8) and from the comprehensive bibliography, Bibliographie der Kameralwissenschaften (1935–7) by Miss Magdalene Humpert, who lists about 14,000 items, most of which fortunately do not come within the range of this history. Also see K.Zielenziger, Die alten deutschen Kameralisten (1914), and Louise Sommer, Die österreichischen Kameralisten (1920–25). An American book may be added: A.W.Small, The Cameralists (1909). 2 See especially Wilhelm Stieda, Die Nationalökonomie als Universitätswissenschaft (1906). We may mention the foundation of the chairs in the Universities of Halle (1727; which immediately evoked derogatory comment as regards the competence of the newly appointed professors), of Uppsala (1740), and of Naples (1754, chair of ‘economia e commercio’ founded for Genovesi). We know, of course, that the teaching of economics must not be dated from these. The scholastic and the natural-law philosophers had taught economics before, both in law and in moral-philosophy courses. And the training of civil servants also antedates the eighteenth century. In the Universities of Naples (founded 1224), Oxford, Prague, Cracow, Vienna, Salamanca, and others its beginnings go back to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and in the sixteenth it was second in importance The consultant administrators 155 to the training of clergymen in Marburg, Königs- berg, Würzburg, and Graz. Moreover, there were professorships of ‘statistics’ in the seventeenth century. It may be of some interest to note that in England and Scotland no chairs of economics per se were founded in the eighteenth century. Professors of agriculture were, however, appointed in Edinburgh, 1792—where the chair of Political Economy actually dates from 1871—and in Oxford, 1796—where it dates from 1825. The practitioners lacked the systematic habit and the erudition of the academic professional, though they made up for these shortcomings by their command of facts and the freshness of their outlook. Nevertheless we shall include them with the teachers in our group of Consultant Administrators. After all, they were mostly public servants writing for other public servants. We must, however, go still further. We must also include a number of men who were not public servants but who made, in the same spirit as did these, the public cares their own or, doing still better, wrote in the genuine spirit of scientific analysis—businessmen, professors of sciences other than economics, private individuals of the most varied backgrounds and stations. Thus we get, alongside of the professional subgroup, another one that forms a unit not in any sociological sense but by virtue of the nature of its performance. From it proceeded much of the most important— especially the most original—work of the period. And this work, though rarely systematic in form, was very often systematic in substance. In England, such publications became so numerous in the seventeenth century that they constitute an easily recognizable standard type; there was also a standard title for them, Discourse of Trade. But they were not confined to England, though elsewhere there was no standard title except, perhaps, in the case of the French Éléments du Commerce of the eighteenth century. We shall call these books Quasi-systems. It was in them that ‘general economics’ first took independent shape. [(c) The Pamphleteers.] The Pamphleteers were a mixed crowd—projectors of banks, canals, industrial and colonial ventures; special pleaders for or against some individual interest, such as the Company of Merchant Adventurers or the East India Company; advocates or foes of a particular measure or policy; planners—often cranks—with pet ideas; and men who do not come within any of these categories but simply wished to clear up some issue or to present a piece of analysis. All of them flourished in all countries owing to the rapid increase of the opportunities for printing and publishing. Newspapers also, rare ventures in the sixteenth century, became plentiful in the seventeenth and, for the eighteenth, 170 papers and periodicals that published economic material have been listed for Germany alone. 3 But England was the classical home of the pamphlet, as we should expect. For nowhere else was there so strong an incentive for anyone with an axe to grind to try to influence public opinion. 3 This is, of course, a total for the century. Many of these papers and periodicals were very short- lived. Perhaps not more than 10 per cent of that total existed at any one time. Nor were they equal to the French in quality. The specifically economic journal is in fact a French achievement. The first of this type was the Journal Oeconomique (1751); then followed the Gazette du Commerce History of economic analysis 156 (1763), which the government bought and supplemented by the Journal de l’Agriculture, du Commerce et des Finances (1764), which became for a time the organ of the physiocrats. It is with these pamphleteers that the difficulty pointed out at the beginning of this section becomes most serious. So far as their writings simply reflect the conditions, humors, struggles, and idiosyncrasies of their day, they are of course very interesting for the economic historian and the historian of economic thought, but of no interest for us. In a report on the present state of economics nobody would think of including the ‘popular’ or what Marx termed the ‘vulgar’ economics of our own time. But up to, say, 1750 no such distinction is possible. All the ‘scientific’ economics there was consisted in the small nucleus contained in the systems of the philosophers of natural law, and with this any intelligent businessman who knew his facts was able to compete successfully without having to acquire any particular technique. Moreover, the Pamphleteers slowly evolved the primitive technique they needed. Some of them produced tracts of strictly scientific character. And the economics of the First Classical Situation owes a considerable debt to them. So we cannot afford to neglect them. But every one of us must, within his individual command of the material, 4 rely upon his own fallible judgment of quality. 3. SIXTEENTH-CENTURY SYSTEMS Again we take the Wealth of Nations as our point of orientation. In the preceding chapter we looked upon A.Smith as a philosopher of natural law. In this one we shall look upon him as a Consultant Administrator. On our way toward him I shall try to avoid confusing and empty enumerations and introduce as few names as possible. But a small number of major or particularly representative performances will, either in this or in the subsequent chapters, be discussed in sufficient detail to give an idea of their nature and significance. Taking the period as a whole, I think that first honors should go to Italy. If there could be any point in such a statement, we might say that economics was primarily an Italian science until the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Spain, France, and England divide second honors, though in very different proportions at different times. The rest of this chapter is devoted chiefly to the first, or professorial, of the two subgroups into which we have 4 So far as I know it, and so far as contributions to economic analysis are concerned, the European pamphlet literature of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries can be reduced to less than two dozen items. The reader must not overlook, however, that we class with the Consultant Administrators several names that other writers would class with the Pamphleteers. The consultant administrators 157 divided the Consultant Administrators, though it will be necessary to cast some glances also at authors of quasi-systems. The reason for this arrangement is not that the works of the former type are of commanding interest or importance. On the contrary, no other group produced, among more inspiring ones, books of such unspeakable tedium. Rather we deal with them first in order to get them out of our way. [(a) The Work of Carafa.] In the late Middle Ages economic history already affords ample evidence of what, in view of our own performances, we are bound to call a high level of insight into the practical problems of economic policy. An often-quoted English instance 1 will suffice to show this. What we should call ‘hearings’ on the outflow of money from England and other currency problems were held in 1382. The reader can easily satisfy himself that what the experts examined had to say makes perfectly good sense and does not differ substantially from what we should expect to hear from similar experts under similar conditions, though it would no doubt be couched in more sophisticated phraseology. If documents such as these reveal the presence of a certain amount of analytic power, there are also indications of the presence of interest in the collection of facts: Étienne Boileau’s Livre des métiers (about 1268), 2 a compilation of the regulations concerning the trades of Paris, is a landmark of this type of research which gathered momentum from the sixteenth century on. Literary effort of the type to be discussed in this chapter also goes far back—in a sense to St. Thomas’ De regimine principum and to the English Speculum regis (ed. by Moisant, 1894) and other works of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, such as Aegidius Colonna’s De regimine principum libri, or Fra Paolino’s Trattato (ed. Mussafia, 1868), or Petrarch’s De republica optime administranda. From this literature emerged, in the fifteenth century, a work so superior to all that had been written before that we may fittingly head our list of Consultant Administrators with its author, though he was primarily a practical one, the Neapolitan count and duke, Carafa. 3 The range of his ideas may be 1 See ‘Opinions of the Officers of the Mint on the State of English Money, 1381–2’ in English Economic History: Select Documents (compiled and ed. by A.E.Bland, P.A.Brown, and R.H.Tawney, 1914), pp. 220 et seq. 2 Edited by Depping in Documents inédits sur l’histoire de France (1837). 3 Diomede Carafa (1406–87), De regis et boni principis officio…(ed. used, 1668; I have not seen the original, written in Italian in the seventies of the fifteenth century). Carafa’s contemporary, Mattheo Palmieri (1405–75), wrote a treatise entitled Della vita civile published in 1529 (posthumously) that is much more definite as to matters of taxation (especially in developing the doctrine that taxes are paid in con- sideration of the help and protection extended by the state to individuals in their economic activities, from which he deduced the principle of proportionality) but seemed to me, on the whole, to be inferior to Carafa’s as a representative performance. History of economic analysis 158 indicated by some of his recommendations. He wanted to see a balanced budget that would have plenty of room for welfare expenditure and avoid the necessity of resorting to forced loans—which he compared to robbery and theft—and the like; definite, equitable, and moderate taxes that would not drive capital from the country or oppress labor which is the source of wealth; business left alone, though he added that industry, agriculture, and commerce alike should be encouraged by loans of money and in other ways; foreign merchants made comfortable because their presence is most useful to the country. All this is no doubt excellent sense and remarkably free from any definite errors and prejudices. But it is equally free from any attempt to analyze. The normal processes of economic life harbored no problem for Carafa. The only problem was how to manage and improve them. In particular we must not suspect a theory of value behind that passage about labor’s being the source of wealth. Such questions exercised the nimble minds of his scholastic contemporaries. But they never occurred to that soldier-statesman. Nevertheless his performance holds a prominent place in the history of economic analysis. His systematic arrangement alone would suffice to show this. The first part of his book discusses the principles of general policy and of defense—compare A.Smith’s lectures on arms—the second the administration of justice. The third is a little treatise on public finance and within measurable, though of course long, distance from the Fifth Book of the Wealth of Nations, ‘Of the Revenue of the Sovereign or Commonwealth.’ The fourth and last part presents Carafa’s views on economic policy proper, and many an eighteenth-century treatise reads like an expansion of these views. There is no evidence that later writers took his book as a model and that, in this sense, he created the systematic form in which an important part of the work of the Consultant Administrators was to be cast. But as a matter of fact, he was, so far as I know, the first to deal comprehensively with the economic problems of the nascent modern state, and during the next three centuries a host of writers, adopting the same systematic ideas and defining their field similarly, followed in his wake and wrote in the spirit that he represented at its best. They no doubt learned to plough more deeply as well as to take new land under the plough. But they did not alter the general layout. In particular they not only adhered to, but in time also developed, the fundamental idea that Carafa clothed in his conception of the Good Prince (and which Sir James Steuart was to personify in his Statesman). This anthropomorphic entity is the embryo of their concept of a National Economy (in German, Volkswirtschaft or Staatswirtschaft), which reflects so well the historic process we have tried to visualize in the first section of this chapter. This National Economy is not simply the sum total of the individual households and firms or of the groups and classes within the borders of a state. It is conceived as a sort of sublimated business unit, something that has a distinct existence and distinct interests of its own and needs to be managed like a big farm. This was the way in which that epoch conceptualized the key position that governments and bureaucracies actually acquired, and also the way in which a distinction was drawn between political and business economy that survived to our own day, although, from a purely analytic standpoint, there is little to be said for it. The consultant administrators 159 [(b) Representative Performances: Bodin and Botero.] In the sixteenth century this type of economics flourished in all continental countries. As representative performances—that were also outstanding in their influence on contemporary and later writers—we shall choose two works by Bodin and by Botero. 4 Both works are primarily treatises on ‘political science’—written in the spirit of Aristotle’s Politics—and as such are important stepping stones between Machiavelli and Montesquieu. Their economics is, like Carafa’s, the economics of public policy and administration, taking its place beside all other branches of political knowledge. The economic analysis in the Sixth Book of Bodin’s République is, however, hardly above the ideas that were current in its time and indeed does not go far beyond Carafa’s, though his principles of taxation do mark further progress toward the Fifth Book of the Wealth of Nations. 5 Botero, who in some other respects may be classed as a follower of Bodin, made a much more important contribution to economic analysis that will be noticed in a subsequent chapter on population. Here, another remark suggests itself. Botero’s treatise, especially if considered in connection with his other works, displays remarkable fact- mindedness. He was an able analyst. But the bulk of his labors went toward the collection, co-ordination, and interpretation of past and contemporaneous fact— economic, social, political. In this he was no exception. We have seen that the scholastic doctors of the sixteenth century were eager fact hunters and that they reasoned much more from observation and much less from abstract premisses than one might suppose. This was, however, still more the case with the literature now under discussion, whose greater part as well as main value may be said to consist in ‘factual’ investigations: then as always, throughout the history of economics, fact-finding was the chief care of the overwhelming majority of economists. Besides Botero’s theory of population, Italy produced during the sixteenth century several other works that are much more important than the systematic literature we are now surveying, especially in the field of money (Davanzati, Scaruffi see below, ch. 6). 4 Jean Bodin or Baudin (Bodinus, 1530–96), Les six livres de la République (1576; 2nd ed. 1577; the one used, 1580). On the author and his works, see Henri Baudrillart, Jean Bodin et son temps (1853), a book which the lapse of nearly a century has not deprived of its authoritative position. This is the only one of Bodin’s works that need be mentioned here; the other that is relevant to our subject will be noticed later (ch. 6). Lest the reader find that our text fails to do justice to the author, I want to emphasize that we consider only his contribution to economic analysis, which I believe to have been but modest, and not his much greater importance in other fields, the theory of sovereignty in particular. Giovanni Botero (1544–1617), Della ragion di stato (1589, many editions and translations; recent ed. with introduction by C.Morandi, 1930, in the series Classici del Pensiero Politico). In order to appreciate the full significance of the work of this great man, two other publications must be mentioned: first, his Delle cause della grandezza delle città (1588), suggestive, in some points, of Montesquieu’s Grandeur des Romains and also of Book III of the Wealth of Nations; and second his universal reports (Relazioni universali), compiled on his travels, on the power and resources of the states of Europe and Asia, which were published 1591–6. 5 They would, I think, have to be Exhibit A in any proof of the continental, mainly French, origins of A.Smith’s ideas on public finance. History of economic analysis 160 [(c) Spain and England.] The very high level of Spanish sixteenth-century economics 6 was due chiefly to the scholastic contributions. But we may note what I believe to have been an early ‘quasi- system,’ the work of Ortiz, 7 mainly a well-reasoned program for industrial development of a type that was to be so prolific in the seventeenth century, both in Spain and in England. For Germany there is little to record. Two quasi-systems that seem to have met with success are, however, mentioned in the footnote below. 8 At first sight one might conceive the impression that in sixteenth-century England there was little to correspond to the type of work surveyed so far. But this is not so. Corresponding work there was, only it took other forms owing to the different political structure of the people to which it was addressed. Discussion of the economic problems of the day, encouraged and also disciplined by the ritual of parliamentary and government inquiries, greatly improved throughout that century and occasionally rose to ‘scientific’ significance. From evidence given before royal commissions—such as the Royal Commission on Exchange, 1564—speeches, petitions, pamphlets on enclosures, guilds, companies, the staple system, monopolies, taxation, currency, customs, poor relief, wages, regulation of industry, and so on, a manual of economic analysis and policy might be compiled that would compare favorably with contemporaneous systematic efforts on the 6 See E.Castelot, ‘Coup d’oeil sur la littérature économique de l’Espagne au XVI e et au XVII e siècle’ (Journal des économistes, vol. 45, 1901); Manuel Colmeiro, Historia de la economia politica en España (1863) and Biblioteca de los economistas españoles (1880); another anthology is helpful, Juan Sempere y Guarinos’ Biblioteca española economico-politica (1801–21), the Spanish counterpart of the Italian Custodi collection; A.V.Castillo, Spanish Mercantilism (1930); E.Hamilton, ‘Spanish Mercantilism before 1700’ (Facts and Factors in Economic History by former students of E.F.Gay); and José Larraz López, ‘La Época del Mercantilismo en Castilla, 1500–1700’ (Real Academia de Ciencias Morales y Politicas, 1943), and the review of this address in the Economic History Review, 1944, by J.Márquez. Señor Larraz speaks of a Spanish school— the ‘school of Salamanca’—of sixteenth-century economists. There is indeed some justification for this. But the core of this school was made up of late scholastics, many of the most eminent of whom happened to be Spaniards; and there was nothing specifically Spanish about their teaching; the rest of Spanish sixteenth-century economists, though most of them were also clerics, do not form a school. 7 Luiz Ortiz, Memorial al Rey para que no salgan dineros de estos reinos de España (1558; see Colmeiro’s Biblioteca). Never mind the title, which might bring the work under ban on the score of ‘mercantilism.’ It has little to do with the true import of the argument and was presumably chosen by the author in order to attract the attention of laymen. 8 Melchior von Osse’s (c. 1506–57) Politisches Testament, written 1556, though published under the title De prudentia regnativa (1607), was reprinted by Thomasius for classroom use, as late as 1717. Georg Obrecht’s (1547–1612) tracts on economic subjects (he is of more importance as a jurist) were posthumously published in 1617 as Fünff underschiedliche Secreta Politica. Bodin’s influence is much in evidence. The consultant administrators 161 . spirit of scientific analysis businessmen, professors of sciences other than economics, private individuals of the most varied backgrounds and stations. Thus we get, alongside of the professional. idiosyncrasies of their day, they are of course very interesting for the economic historian and the historian of economic thought, but of no interest for us. In a report on the present state of economics. place in the history of economic analysis. His systematic arrangement alone would suffice to show this. The first part of his book discusses the principles of general policy and of defense—compare