consumption to production. In their attempt to preserve symmetry and order in their generalisations they constructed a weird creature, the economic man, who never existed, and never could exist. The mediævals made no such mistake. They insisted that all production and gain which did not lead to the good of man was not alone wasteful, but positively evil; and that man was infinitely more important than wealth. When he exclaims that 'Production is on account of man, not man of production,' Antoninus of Florence sums up in a few words the whole view-point of his age.[1] 'Consumption,' according to Dr. Cunningham, 'was the aspect of human nature which attracted most attention…. Regulating consumption wisely was the chief practical problem in mediæval economics.'[2] The great practical benefits of such a treatment of the problems relating to the acquisition and enjoyment of material wealth must be obvious to every one who is familiar with the condition of the world after a century of classical political economy. 'To subordinate the economic order to the social order, to submit the industrial activity of man to the consideration of the final and general end of his whole being, is a principle which must exert on every department of the science of wealth, an influence easy to understand. Economic laws are the codification of the material activity of a sort of homo economicus; of a being, who, having no end in view but wealth, produces all he can, distributes his produce in the way that suits him best, and consumes as much as he can. Self interest alone dictates his conduct.'[3] Economics, far from being a science whose highest aim was to evolve a series of abstractions, was a practical guide to the conduct of everyday affairs.[4] 'The pre-eminence of morality in the domain of economics constitutes at the same time the distinctive feature, the particular merit, and the great teaching of the economic lessons of this period.'[5]

[Footnote 1: Irish Theological Quarterly, vol. vii. p. 151.]

[Footnote 2: Christianity and Economic Science, p. 10.]

[Footnote 3: Brants, Les Théories économiques aux xiii^{e} et xii^{e} siècles, p. 34.]

[Footnote 4: Gide and Rist, History of Economic Doctrines, Eng. trans., p. 110.]

[Footnote 5: Brants, op. cit., p. 9.]

Dr. Cunningham draws attention to the fact that the existence of such a universally received code of economic morality was largely due to the comparative simplicity of the mediæval social structure, where the relations of persons were all important, in comparison with the modern order, where the exchange of things is the dominant factor. He further draws attention to the changes which affected the whole constitution of society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and proceeds: 'These changes had a very important bearing on all questions of commercial morality; so long as economic dealings were based on a system of personal relationships they all bore an implied moral character. To supply a bad article was morally wrong, to demand excessive payment for goods or for labour was extortion, and the right or wrong of every transaction was easily understood.'[1] The application of ethics to economic transactions was rendered possible by the existence of one universally recognised code of morality, and the presence of one universally accepted moral teacher. 'In the thirteenth century, the ecclesiastical organisation gave a unity to the social structure throughout the whole of Western Europe; over the area in which the Pope was recognised as the spiritual and the Emperor as the temporal vicar of God, political and racial differences were relatively unimportant. For economic purposes it is scarcely necessary to distinguish different countries from one another in the thirteenth century, for there were fewer barriers to social intercourse within the limits of Christendom than there are to-day…. Similar ecclesiastical canons, and similar laws prevailed over large areas, where very different admixtures of civil and barbaric laws were in vogue. Christendom, though broken into so many fragments politically, was one organised society for all the purposes of economic life, because there was such free intercommunication between its parts.'[2] 'There were three great threads,' we read later in the same book, 'which ran through the whole social system of Christendom. First of all there was a common religious life, with the powerful weapons of spiritual censure and excommunication which it placed in the hands of the clergy, so that they were able to enforce the line of policy which Rome approved. Then there was the great judicial system of canon law, a common code with similar tribunals for the whole of Western Christendom, dealing not merely with strictly ecclesiastical affairs, but with many matters that we should regard as economic, such as questions of commercial morality, and also with social welfare as affected by the law of marriage and the disposition of property by will….'[3] 'To the influence of Christianity as a moral doctrine,' says Dr. Ingram, 'was added that of the Church as an organisation, charged with the application of the doctrine to men's daily transactions. Besides the teaching of the sacred books there was a mass of ecclesiastical legislation providing specific prescriptions for the conduct of the faithful. And this legislation dealt with the economic as well as with other provinces of social activity.'[4]

[Footnote 1: Growth of English Industry and Commerce, vol. i. p. 465.]

[Footnote 2: Cunningham, Western Civilisation, vol. ii. pp. 2-3.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid., p. 67.]

[Footnote 4: Op. cit., p. 27.]

The teaching of the mediæval Church, therefore, on economic affairs was but the application to particular facts and cases of its general moral teaching. The suggestion, so often put forward by so-called Christian socialists, that Christianity was the exponent of a special social theory of its own, is unfounded. The direct opposite would be nearer the truth. Far from concerning itself with the outward forms of the political or economic structure, Christianity concentrated its attention on the conduct of the individual. If Christianity can be said to have possessed any distinctive social theory, it was intense individualism. 'Christianity brought, from the point of view of morals, an altogether new force by the distinctly individual and personal character of its precepts. Duty, vice or virtue, eternal punishment—all are marked with the most individualist imprint that can be imagined. No social or political theory appeared, because it was through the individual that society was to be regenerated…. We can say with truth that there is not any Christian political economy—in the sense in which there is a Christian morality or a Christian dogma—any more than there is a Christian physic or a Christian medicine.'[1] In seeking to learn Christian teaching of the Middle Ages on economic matters, we must therefore not look for special economic treatises in the modern sense, but seek our principles in the works dealing with general morality, in the Canon Law, and in the commentaries on the Civil Law. 'We find the first worked out economic theory for the whole Catholic world in the Corpus Juris Canonici, that product of mediæval science in which for so many centuries theology, jurisprudence, philosophy, and politics were treated….'[2]

[Footnote 1: Rambaud, op. cit., pp. 34-5; Cunningham, Western
Civilisation, vol. ii. p. 8.]

[Footnote 2: Roscher, op. cit., p. 5. It must not be concluded that all the opinions expressed by the theologians and lawyers were necessarily the official teaching of the Church. Brants says: 'It is not our intention to attribute to the Church all the opinions of this period; certainly