it is impossible to make any such distinction between what is natural and what is not so. Everything results from nature, and everything results from positive institution too. There is in economics either no nature at all, or there is nothing else. Human will effects or affects all; and human will is itself influenced, of course, by human nature and human condition. Roscher says that it is a mistake to speak of industry being forced into "unnatural" courses by priests or tyrants, for the priests and tyrants are part and parcel of the people themselves, deriving all their resources from the people, and in no respect Archimedeses standing outside of their own world. The action of the State in economic affairs is just as natural as the action of the farmer or the manufacturer; and the latter is as much matter of positive institution as the former. But while Roscher condemns this distinction, he does not go the length his disciples have gone, and reject the whole idea of natural law in the sphere of political economy. On the contrary, he actually makes use of the expression, "the natural laws of political economy," and asserts that, when they are once sufficiently known, all that is then needed to guide economic politics is to obtain exact and reliable statistics of the situation to which they are to be applied. Now that statement is exactly the position of the classical school on the subject. Economic politics is, of course, like all other politics, an affair of times and nations; but economic science belongs to mankind, and contains principles which may be accurately enough termed, as Roscher terms them, natural laws, and which may be applied, as he would apply them, to the improvement of particular economic situations, on condition that sufficiently complete and correct statistics are obtained beforehand of the whole actual circumstances. Economic laws are, of course, of the nature of ethical laws, and not of physical; but they are none the less on that account natural laws, and the polemic instituted by the Socialists of the Chair to expel the notion of natural law from the entire territory of political economy is unjustifiable. Phenomena which are the result of human action will always exhibit regularities while human character remains the same; and, moreover, they often exhibit undesigned regularities which, not being imposed upon them by man, must be imposed upon them by Nature. While, therefore, the Socialists of the Chair have made a certain point against the older economists by showing the futility and mischief of distinguishing between what is natural in economics and what is not, they have erred in seeking to convert that point into an argument against the validity of economic principles and the existence of economic laws. At the same time their position constitutes a wholesome protest against the tendency to exaggerate the completeness or finality of current doctrines, and gives