PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON;EXAMINER IN LOGIC AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON.
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
549 AND 551 BROADWAY.
1880.
[Pg 5]In preparing this little treatise, I have tried to put the truths ofPolitical Economy into a form suitable for elementary instruction. Whileconnected with Owens College, it was my duty, as Cobden Lecturer onPolitical Economy, to instruct a class of pupil-teachers, in order thatthey might afterwards introduce the teaching of this important subjectinto elementary schools. There can be no doubt that it is most desirableto disseminate knowledge of the truths of political economy through allclasses of the population by any means which may be available. Fromignorance of these truths arise many of the worst socialevils—disastrous strikes and lockouts, opposition to improvements,improvidence, destitution, misguided charity, and discouraging failurein many well-intended measures. More than forty years ago Miss Martineausuccessfully popularised the truths of political economy in heradmirable tales. About the same time, Archbishop Whately was much struckwith the need of inculcating knowledge of these matters at an early age.With this view he prepared his "Easy Lessons on Money Matters," of whichmany editions have been printed. In early boyhood I learned my firstideas of political economy from a copy of these lessons, from thepreface to which I quote these remarks of Whately: "The rudiments ofsound knowledge concerning these (subjects) may, it has been found byexperience, be communicated at a very early age.... Those, therefore,who are engaged in conducting, or in patronising or promotingeducation,[Pg 6] should consider it