a brief sketch of the growth of economic doctrine. The editor begs to acknowledge his great indebtedness for information to his colleague, Professor Charles F. Dunbar, of Harvard University.
Systematic study for an understanding of the laws of political economy is to be found no farther back than the [pg 002] sixteenth century. The history of political economy is not the history of economic institutions, any more than the history of mathematics is the history of every object possessing length, breadth, and thickness. Economic history is the story of the gradual evolution in the thought of men of an understanding of the laws which to-day constitute the science we are studying. It is essentially modern.1
Aristotle2 and Xenophon had some comprehension of the theory of money, and Plato3 had defined its functions with some accuracy. The economic laws of the Romans were all summed up in the idea of enriching the metropolis at the expense of the dependencies. During the middle ages no systematic study was undertaken, and the nature of economic laws was not even suspected.
It is worth notice that the first glimmerings of political economy came to be seen through the discussions on money, and the extraordinary movements of gold and silver. About the time of Charles V, the young study was born, accompanied by the revival of learning, the Reformation, the discovery of America, and the great fall in the value of gold and silver. Modern society was just beginning, and had already brought manufactures into existence—woolens in England, silks in France, Genoa, and Florence; Venice had become the great commercial city of the world; the Hanseatic League was carrying goods from the Mediterranean to the Baltic; and the Jews of Lombardy had by that time brought into use the bill of exchange. While the supply of the precious metals had been tolerably constant hitherto, the steady increase of business brought about a fall of prices. From the middle of the