A Text-Book of Political Economy

Abstract

PROFESSOR WALKER'S “Text-Book,” for the most part an abridgment of the larger work published in 1883, deserves to be received with the highest commendation as supplying a much-felt want in English literature of the subject. An introductory treatment of so complex a study as political economy, written with due insight into the theoretical difficulties of the subject, and at the same time with adequate notice of the practical problems which these involve, can hardly be said to be given in any of the smaller manuals in current use in this country. The praiseworthy work of the late Prof. Fawcett, with its condensation by Mrs. Fawcett, kept on the whole too rigidly to the lines prescribed by Mill's classical treatise, and remained unaffected by many discussions which had shown the need of altering or amending the cardinal doctrines so forcibly stated by Mill. There is hardly any portion of the theory of political economy which has not received attention since the date of Mill's exposition, while the pressure of new practical problems has of itself been sufficient to render necessary some revision of the general theory. Prof. Walker, while retaining on the whole Mill's general conception of the limits and divisions of economical science, has incorporated many results of recent research, and has in addition so keen an eye for practical issues that his exposition, even when remaining within the lines of the older doctrine, gains peculiar freshness and interest.