ABSTRACT
Modern Political Economy may be said to begin with the introduction of taxation as a means of supporting the State, in place of personal service, aids in kind, and revenues from crown property; and taxation begins with the absolute monarchy that superseded the feudal system. Thus Political Economy begins with the growth of States in their modern form. It grows out of the discussions about the relation of the revenue to the monarch, who received it, and who was anxious to nd out the best ways of increasing it. Hence its early connection with questions of coinage, currency and debasement. It is connected at this middle stage of its history rather with nance and political philosophy than, as at rst and afterwards, with moral philosophy. At the end of the middle ages any alteration in the view of wealth taken by speculative thinkers shows itself rather in sumptuary laws than in measures traceable to the “Mercantile Theory.” Later, when there grew up a special branch of study roughly corresponding to our modern Political Economy, the said study was directed rather to the commercial relations between one nation and another than to the industrial order of one nation within itself, just as the study of natural law, so brilliantly revived by Grotius, was largely a study of international law.
