ABSTRACT
The science of government is divided into two large branches, in accordance with the means they use to achieve their goal of general happiness. The physical well-being of man, so far as it can be produced by his government, is the object of Political Economy. The improvement of social order is generally advantageous to the poor as well as to the rich; and political economy points out the means of preserving this order by correction, but not of overturning it. It was a beneficent decree of Providence, which gave wants and sufferings to human nature, because out of these it has formed the incitements, which are to awaken our activity, and to push us forward to develop our whole being. Sismondi uses national happiness as a synonym for political economy, a notion that may have struck his contemporaries as romantic.
