He encourages a spirit of revolt on the part of working men against their perpetual condemnation,as a class,to the lot ofliving by wages,without having satisfactory proof that this state of things is capable of change,and without showing thatsuch a lot,duly regulated by law and morality,is inconsistent with their real happiness.He also insists on the "independence"of the working class --which,according to him,faràda sè--in such a way as to obscure,if not to controvert,the truths thatsuperior rank and wealth are naturally invested with social power,and are bound in duty to exercise it for the benefit of thecommunity it large,and especially of its less favoured members,And he attaches a quite undue importance to mechanicaland indeed,illusory expedients,such as the limitation of the power of bequest and the confiscation of the "unearnedincrement "of rent.
With respect to economic method also,he shifted his position;yet to the end occupied uncertain ground.In the fifth of hisearly essays he asserted that the method a priori ;is the only mode of investigation in the social sciences,and that the method a posteriori ;"is altogether inefficacious in those sciences,as a means of arriving at any considerable body of valuabletruth."When he wrote his Logic ,he had learned from Comte that the a posteriori method-in the form which he chose to call"inverse deduction"--was the only mode of arriving at truth in general sociology;and his admission of this at once rendersthe essay obsolete.But,unwilling to relinquish the a priori method of his youth,he tries to establish a distinction of twosorts of economic inquiry,one of which,though not the other,can be handled by that method.Sometimes he speaks ofpolitical economy as a department "carved out of the general body of the science of society,."whilst on the other hand thetitle of his systematic work implies a doubt whether political economy is a part of "social philosophy "at all,and not rather astudy preparatory and auxiliary to it.Thus,on the logical as well as the dogmatic side,he halts between two opinions.
Notwithstanding his misgivings and even disclaimers,he yet remained,as to method,a member of the old school,and neverpassed into the new or "historical "school,to which the future belongs.The question of economic method was also takenup by the ablest of his disciples,John Elliott Cairnes (1824-75),who devoted a volume to the subject (Logical Method ofPolitical Economy ,1857,.2d ed.,1875).Professor Walker has spoken of the method advocated by Cairnes as beingdifferent from that put forward by Mill,and has even represented the former as similar to,if not identical with,that of theGerman historical school.But this is certainly an error.Cairnes,notwithstanding some apparent vacillation of view andcertain concessions more formal than real,maintains the utmost rigour of the deductive method;he distinctly affirms that inpolitical economy there is no room for induction at all,"the economist starting with a knowledge of ultimate causes,"andbeing thus,"at the outset of his enterprise,at the position which the physicist only attains after ages of laborious research."He does not,indeed,seem to be advanced beyond the point of view of Senior,who professed to deduce all economic truthfrom four elementary propositions.Whilst Mill in his Logic represents verification as an essential part of the proccss ofdemonstration of economic laws,Cairnes holds that,as they "are not assertions respecting the character or sequence ofphenomena "(though what else can a scientific law be ?),"they can neither be established nor refuted by statistical ordocumentary evidence."A proposition which affirms nothing respecting phenomena cannot be controlled by beingconfronted with phenomena.Notwithstanding the unquestionable ability of his book,it appears to mark,in some respects,aretrogression in methodology,and can for the future possess only an historical interest.
