explicit and instructive are the words and spirit of the New Testament. There cannot be the least doubt that the whole influence of Christianity is favorable to the freest commercial exchanges at home and abroad, because these depend largely on mutual confidence between man and man, of which confidence Christianity is the greatest promoter. It may be conceded at once that our Lord "overthrew the tables of the money-changers and the seats of them that sold doves" within the sacred precincts of the temple, but this, not because it is wrong to change money or sell doves, but because that was not the place for such merchandising; so He himself explained his own action in the sequel; provincial worshippers coming up to Jerusalem must needs have their coins changed into the money of the Capital, and must needs buy somewhere the animal victims for sacrifice; but the whip of small cords had significance only as to the place, and not at all as to the propriety, of such trading.

One of our Lord's parables, the parable of the Talents, sets forth in several striking lights the privilege and duty and reward of diligent trading. "Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents." And when this servant came to the reckoning, and brought as the result of his free and busy traffic "five talents more," the prompt and hearty approval of his lord—"well done, thou good and faithful servant"—becomes the testimony of the New Testament to the merit and the profit and the benefit of a vigorous buying and selling. For this servant could not have been authoritatively pronounced good and faithful if the results of his action commended had been in any way prejudicial to others. The truth is, as we shall abundantly see by and by with the reasons of it, that any man who buys and sells under the free and natural conditions of trade, benefits the man he trades with just as much as he benefits himself. But the parable has a still stronger word in favor of exchanges. There was another servant also entrusted with capital by his lord at the same time, when the latter was about to travel "into a far country." We are expressly told that distribution was made "to every man according to his several ability," and thus this servant was only entrusted with a single talent, the size of the capital given to him being in just proportion to the size of the man,—the smallest share falling of course to the smallest man. But he had the same opportunity as the two others. The world was open to him. Capital was in demand, if not in those parts then in some other, to which, like his lord, he might straightway take his journey. But when his time of reckoning came, and he had nothing to show for the use of his capital, he upbraided his lord as a hard man for expecting any increase, and brought out his bare talent wrapped in a napkin, saying, "I was afraid, and I went and hid thy talent in the earth." His wise lord at once denounced this servant as "wicked and slothful," insisted that his money ought to have been "put to the exchangers," and said finally in a just anger "cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness."

It is moreover in incidental passages of the Scriptures, in which the methods of business are commended to the searchers after higher things, that we see their high estimate of those methods and gains. "Buy the truth, and sell it not; buy wisdom and understanding" (Prov. xxiii, 23). "Buying up for yourselves opportunities" (Col. iv, 5). "I counsel thee to buy of me gold refined by fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white garments, that thou mayest be clothed; and eye-salve to anoint thine eyes, that thou mayest see" (Rev. iii, 18). "But rather let him labor, working with his hands at that which is good, that he may have to give to him that is in need" (Eph. iv, 28). "But if any one provideth not for his own, and especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever" (1 Tim. v, 8).

Now, the universal test and proof of any truth is its harmony with some other truths. Does an alleged truth fall in with and fill out well some other demonstrated and accepted proposition, or a number of such other propositions? If so, then that truth is proved. Human reason can no further go. The mind rests with relish and content in a new acquisition. To apply this to the case in hand,—if men were designed of their Maker to buy and sell to their own mutual benefit and advancement, if mankind have always been buying and selling as towards that end and with that obvious result, and if the Future promises to increase and reduplicate the buying and selling of the Present in every direction without end, and all in the interest of a broad civilization and a true and lasting progress; and if, in harmony with these truths, the written revelation of God in every part of it assumes that buying and selling in its inmost substance and essential forms be good and righteous and progressive, and suitable in all its ends and methods to illustrate and enforce ends and methods in the higher kingdom of spiritual and eternal Life;—then these coördinate truths will logically and certainly follow, (1) that Trade is natural and essential and beneficial to mankind; (2) that it constitutes in an important sense a realm of human thought and action by itself, separate from the neighboring realm of Giving, and equally from the hostile realm of Stealing; and (3) that a careful analysis of what buying and selling in its own peculiar nature is, a thorough ascertainment and a consequent clear statement of its fundamental laws, and a faithful exposure of what in individual selfishness and in subtle or open Legislation makes against these laws, must be of large consequence to the welfare of mankind.

Accordingly, let us now attempt such Analysis and Ascertainment and Exposure. This is precisely the task that lies before us in this book—just this, and nothing more. The term, "Political Economy," has long been and is still an elastic title over the zealous work of many men in many lands; but in the hands of the present writer during a life now no longer short, the term has always had a definite meaning, the work has covered an easily circumscribed field, and so the present undertaking concerns only Buying and Selling and what is essentially involved in that. This gives scope and verge enough for the studies of a life-time. This has the advantage of a complete sphere of its own. Terms may thus be made as definite as the nature of language will ever allow; definitions will thus cover things of one kind only; and generalizations, although they may be delicate and difficult, will deal with no incongruous and obstinate material.

1. The grandfather of the writer, an illiterate but long-headed farmer, was able to give good points to his three college-bred sons, by insisting that they look "into the natur on't." What, then, are the ultimate elements of Buying and Selling? What are the invariable conditions that precede, accompany, and follow, any and every act of Trade? Of course we are investigating now and throughout this treatise the deliberative acts of reasonably intelligent human beings, in one great department of their common foresight and rational action. We have consequently nothing to do here with Fraud or Theft or Mania or Gift. Acts put forth under the impulse of these are direct opposites of, or at best antagonistic to, acts of Trade. They tend to kill trade, and therefore they are no part of trade. These, then, and such as these, aside, we will now analyze a single Act of Exchange at one time and place,—which will serve in substance for all acts of exchange in all times and places, and just find out for