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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 24

Notes in Support

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Notes in Support.

"The foremost lessons of Political Economy are directed against narrow visions of private advantage, and they strive to show how the welfare of each man is most effectively achieved by securing the welfare of all. But it seems otherwise to the natural mind. The immediate gain lies before it, can be seen and handled, and the law which demands its sacrifice in order to arrive at a wider and more prolific result appears to contradict the senses, and to bring ruin and not benefit in its train." . . . "The moral to be drawn is the importance of thoroughly imbuing the mind with accurate principle before prejudice has had time to build itself up, while the mind is impressible by reason, and truths firmly implanted retain their hold for life."—Professor Bonamy Price.

"Unless the generally recognised principles of Economic Science are a tissue of fallacies, it can be easily shown that no scheme of social improvement can be of permanent efficacy if it is unaccompanied by an increased development of providence amongst the general mass of the people."—Professor Fawcett.

"An economic millennium would be an epoch in which there was no waste—no waste of human lives, no ignoble sloth, no disease and decrepitude engendered by ignorance or neglect of natural laws, no waste of useful things in vulgar, insolent vanity; above all, no waste of health, substance, and self-respect in drunkenness and its attendant vices."—Mr. Newmarch, Address at Leeds, 10th October, 1871.

"Economists are often charged with indifference to all moral distinctions, and Mr. Ruskin tells us that an economist is 'essentially of the type of a flat fish—one eyeless side of him always in the mud, and one eye on the side that has eyes, down in the corner of his mouth.' Yet, it is a rigorous economist, William Ellis, that writes :—'For the children of the poorer classes, that education is the best which fits and disposes them to preserve themselves from destitution; for the children of the richer classes, that education is the best which is most likely to preserve them, in the expenditure of their wealth, from frivolity, profligacy, and indifference to the sufferings and helplessness of others."—Professor Hodgson.

"The loss of all the vigorous impulse of what some people choose to call selfishness, would be the decay and ruin of the world. Both motives, the well-being of himself and the well-being of the community, must live together in every man, in any ideal of society which we commonplace mortals can adopt."—Blackwood's Magazine, July 1871, p. 57.

"The labour and the savings of individuals are at once the source and the measure of national opulence and public prosperity. They may be compared to the drops of dew which invigorate and mature all vegetable nature. None of them has singly any perceptible influence; but we owe the foliage of summer and the fruits of autumn to their combined action. "—J. R. M'Culloch, Principles of Polit. Econ.

"Philanthropy can do no harm and much good, by devoting all its energies to the young; and the more it improves their mind and morals, the more chance is there that they will aim at a higher standard of living."

"Here then is a great work for education—to bring men's estimate of their individual and class interests into accordance with truth and wisdom, and with the general well-being. How far it may be wise or right to restrict individual freedom is often a disputable point. Not so as to the wisdom or right to diffuse intelligence, and foster habits consonant therewith. Light must go hand in hand with liberty. Freedom to stumble in the dark is not an unmixed boon."—Professor Hodgson, Inaugural Address at the University of Edinburgh, Nov. 1871.