The method followed by Jones is inductive;his conclusions are founded on a wide observation of contemporary facts,aidedby the study of history."If,"he said,"we wish to make ourselves acquainted with the economy and arrangements by whichthe different nations of the earth produce and distribute their revenues,I really know of but one way to attain our object,andthat is,to look and see.We must get comprehensive views of facts,that we may arrive at principles that are trulycomprehensive.If we take a different method,if we snatch at general principles,and content ourselves with confinedobservations,two things will happen to us.First,what we call general principles will often be found to have no generality--we shall set out with declaring propositions to be universally true which,at every step of our further progress,we sh&ll beobliged to confess are frequently false;and,secondly,we shall miss a great mass of useful knowledge which those whoadvance to principles by a comprehensive examination of facts necessarily meet with on their road."The world he professedto study was not an imaginary world,inhabited by abstract "economic men,"but the real world with the different formswhich the ownership and cultivation of land,and,in general,the conditions of production and distribution,assume atdifferent times and places.His recognition of such different systems of life in communities occupying different stages in theprogress of civilisation led to his proposal of what he called a "political economy of nations."This was a protest against thepractice of taking the exceptional state of facts which exists,and is indeed only partially realised,in a small corner of ourplanet as representing the uniform type of human societies,and ignoring the effects of the early history and specialdevelopment of each community as influencing its economic phenomena.
It is sometimes attempted to elude the necessity for a wider range of study by alleging a universal tendency in the socialworld to assume this now exceptional shape as its normal and ultimate constitution.Even if this tendency were real (which isonly partially true,for the existing order amongst ourselves cannot be regarded %entirely definitive),it could not beadmitted that the facts witnessed in our civilization and those exhibited in less advanced communities are so approximate asto be capable of being represented by the same formula.As Whewell,in editing Jones's Remains,1859,well observed,it istrue in the physical world that "all things tend to assume a form determined by the force of gravity;the hills tend to becomeplains,the water,the rivers to falls to eat away their beds and disappear,form lakes in the valleys,the glaciers to pour downin cataracts."But are we to treat these results as achieved,because forces are in operation which may ultimately bring themabout?All human questions are largely questions of time i and the economic phenomena which really belong to the severalstages of the human movement must be studied as they are,unless we are content to fall into grievous error both in ourtheoretic treatment of them and in the solution of the practical problems they present.
Jones is remarkable for his freedom from exaggeration and one-sided statement;thus,whilst holding Malthus in,perhaps,undue esteem,he declines to accept the proposition that an increase of the means of subsistence is necessarily followed byan increase of population;and he maintains what is undoubtedly true,that with the growth of population,in allwell-governed and prosperous states,the command over food,instead of diminishing,increases.
Much of what he has left us-a large part of which is unfortunately fragmentary-is akin to the labours of Cliffe Leslie at a laterperiod.The latter,however,had the advantage of acquaintance with the sociology of Comte,which gave him a firmer graspof method,as well as a wider view of the general movement of society;and,whilst the voice of Jones was but little heardamidst the general applause accorded to Ricardo in the economic world of his time,Leslie wrote when disillusion had set in,and the current was beginning to turn in England against the a priori economics.
