The System of Economic Freedom

Abstract

If I had been speaking before almost any other audience I should have felt obliged to preface my remarks by some apology for my subject. When I began to study economics, thirty years ago, the senior generation of economists in this country — Marshall, Edgeworth, Fox-well and Cannan — were all men who, in their different ways, were truly learned in what may be called the scholarship of the subject; and some acquaintance with the history of economic thought was usually deemed to be a desirable part of the equipment of the economist. But, in the years that have passed since then, all that has changed. In most centres of study, this kind of knowledge has come to be regarded as a very unimportant embellishment, as inessential to the economist as a knowledge of the history of chemistry is said to be inessential to the chemist. This development has always seemed to me to be unfortunate I do not think that, even in the purely analytical field, our knowledge is so far advanced as to justify us in writing off as superseded the propositions of all but our immediate contemporaries; and, in the applied field, I do not think that we can hope to understand the problems and policies of our own day if we do not know the problems and policies out of which they grew.