ABSTRACT
Political science has heretofore been dominated by the idea that laws spring full born from the mind of the inspired legislator—prolem sine matre creatam—and that their function is to regulate social relations according to immutable principles of justice. The process by which the economic system thus determines its corresponding political constitution, the organic bond which unites the one to the other, is the political monopoly of property. The great Scotsman’s Liberalism was thus much less a product of eighteenth century philosophy than the result of his profound idea that political preponderance naturally belonged to the economically dominant classes. Instead of remaining an analysis of human society, a social physics, political economy thus becomes a mere science of administration ; and the moment politics enters the domain of economics, its scientific character disappears. The practical task thus imposed upon economic science stands in no sort of opposition to the exclusive retention of political power by the proprietary classes.
