First Period : Before 1776.

§1. This period, though lengthy from the point of view of the geologist or the general historian, need not detain us long. The state of economic science before Adam Smith has been compared to that of astronomy before Copernicus. In neither case was there much to show. ¹ The beginnings of modern economic literature may be traced to the seventeenth century writings of the Mercantilists in England and of the Cameralists in Germany. These writers attempted, without much success, to determine the relation of foreign trade to the aggregate wealth of a State. But “the Mercantilists appear to have had no theory of wages or rent. They were more or less unsystematic pamphleteers, and their ends concerned production rather than distribution.” ² The problem of the causes which determine the division of a given product between different persons or classes does not seem to have presented itself to their minds.