Sismondi’s disagreement was not upon the theoretical principles of political economy. So far as these were concerned he declared himself a disciple of Adam Smith.[374] He merely disagreed with the method, the aim, and the practical conclusions of the Classical school. We will examine his arguments on each of these points. First of all as regards method. He draws an important distinction between Smith and his followers, Ricardo and J. B. Say. “Smith,” says he, “attempted to study every fact in the light of its own social environment,” and “his immortal work is, indeed, the outcome of a philosophic study of the history of mankind.”[375] Towards Ricardo, who is accused of having introduced the abstract method into the science, his attitude is quite different, and much as he admired Malthus, who, “possessed of a singularly forceful and penetrative mind, had cultivated the habit of a conscientious study of facts,”[376] still his spirit shrank from admitting those abstractions which Ricardo and his disciples demanded from him.[377] Political economy, he thought, was best treated as a “moral science where all facts are interwoven and where a false step is taken whenever one single fact is isolated and attention is concentrated upon it alone.”[378] The science was to be based on experience, upon history and observation. Human conditions were to be studied in detail. Allowance was to be made for the period in which a man lived, the country he inhabited, and the profession he followed, if the individual was to be clearly visualised and the influence of economic institutions upon him successfully traced. “I am convinced,” says he, “that serious mistakes have ensued from the too frequent generalisations which have been made in social science.”[379] This criticism was levelled not only at Ricardo and McCulloch, but it also included J. B. Say within its purview, for Say had treated political economy as an exposition of a few general principles. It also prepared the way for that conception of political economy upon the discovery of which the German Historical school so prided itself at a later date. Sismondi, himself an historian and a publicist interested in immediate reforms, could not fail to see quite clearly the effects that social institutions and political organisation were bound to have upon economic prosperity. A good illustration of his method is furnished by his treatment of the probable effects of a complete abolition of the English Corn Laws. The question, he remarks, could not be decided by theoretical arguments alone without taking some account of the various methods of cultivating the soil. A country of tenant farmers such as England would find it difficult to meet the competition of feudal countries such as Poland or Russia, where corn only costs the proprietor “a few hundred lashes judiciously bestowed upon the peasants.”[380]