In attempting to define List’s real significance one feels that he failed in the achievement of his chief aim. He has not succeeded in breaking down the abstract theory of international trade. On the other hand, he did make a real contribution to economic science, a contribution which the whole of the nineteenth century seemed bent upon emphasising, namely, that the Classical writers had been too ready to draw universal conclusions from their doctrines, forgetting that in economics it is never safe to pass from pure theory to practical applications without taking account of the intermediate links and making allowance for change of time and place—considerations which abstract theory rightly avoids. List’s merit lies in his having emphasised this truth, especially in the region of international trade, and in his doing it just at that particular moment. CHAPTER V: PROUDHON AND THE SOCIALISM OF 1848 Proudhon comes next, though his place in the history of economic doctrines is not easily defined. Like all socialists he begins with a criticism of the rights of property. The economists had carefully avoided discussing them, and political economy had become a mere _résumé_ of the results of private property. Proudhon regarded these rights as the very basis of the present social system and the real cause of every injustice. Accordingly he starts with a criticism of property in opposition to the economists who defended it. But how can we reform the present system or replace it by a better? Herein lies the difficulty. Born twenty years earlier, Proudhon, like many others, would perhaps have invented a Utopia. But what was possible in 1820 was no longer so twenty years later. Public opinion was already satiated with schemes of reform. Owen, Saint-Simon, Fourier, Cabet, and Louis Blanc had each in his turn proposed a remedy. The fancy of reformers had roamed at will over the whole wide expanse of possible reforms. Proudhon was well acquainted with all these efforts, and had come to the conclusion that they were all equally useless. Hence he turns out to be a critic of the socialists as well as of the economists.