This, therefore, is the ground we must explore. We must develop applied Political Economy which takes cognizance of external circumstances. To do this, no one will question that the best and most decisive of methods is the historical, which concerns itself with time, space and nationality, and which leads to proper reformation where reformation is wanted. Moreover, principles will be no less firmly established by historical induction than by dogmatic deduction, and, moreover, science will be inseparable from art. We are not of those who deny principles, or who challenge them. What we desire is, that they should not be worshiped as fetiches, but that they should enter into the very life-blood of nations. Further: the abstract deductions of pure science do not leave us without disquietude, since they treat man much more like a material than like a moral force. Under the vigorous procedure of speculative mathematics, man becomes a constant quantity for all times and all countries, whereas he is, in reality, a variable quantity. All the elements put in play are ideal entities, the reverse of which we find in poetry, where Tout prend un corps, une ame, un esprit, un visage! and where everything loses the character of life, and is transformed into inanimate units. Man is something different from the sum of the services he may be made to render, and from the sum of enjoyments which may be procured for him. We must not run the risk of lowering him to the level of a living tool; and from the moment that we are required to take his moral destiny into account, what becomes of abstract calculation? X. We have been wrong, says Rossi, in reproaching Quesnay for his famous _laissez faire, laissez passer_, which is pure science. We, also, are of opinion that the reproach was ill founded, for it proceeded from a wrong conception of the principle itself. But it seems to us that, far from condemning this doctrine in its serious application, the historical method may serve to explain and to justify it. Employing less of rigidity and dryness in form, it reaches consequences more in harmony with social life. But it is not to be imagined that we do not meet in this way with many ancient and glorious precedents. The great principles of industrial liberty, as well as those of commercial liberty, originated in France. Forbonnais was right when he said: “We may congratulate ourselves on being able to find, in our old books and ancient ordinances, wherewith to vindicate for ourselves the right to that light which we generally supposed to have been revealed to the English and Dutch before us.” The further Forbonnais carried his researches into our annals, the greater the number of traces of opposition to the prejudices in favor of exclusion and monopoly, so long made principles of administrative policy, did he find.(41)