LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OP CALIFORNIA IRVINE T? r . BURT FRANKLIN RESEARCH AND SOURCE WORKS SERIES No. 43 THE CAMERALISTS THE CAMERALISTS THE PIONEERS OF GERMAN SOCIAL POLITY BT ALBION W. SMALL BURT FRANKLIN RESEARCH AND SOURCE WORKS SERIES No. 43 BURT FRANKLIN New York 25, N.Y. Published by BURT FRANKLIN 514 West 113th Street New York 25, N. Y. First Published Chicago 1909 PRINTED IN U.S.A. TABLE OF CONTENTS PACE PREFACE vii CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION TO CAMERALISM ....... i II. THE Civics OF OSSE 21 III. THE Civics OF OBRECHT 4 IV. THE CAMERALISTICS OF SECKENDORFF .... 60 V. THE CAMERALISTICS OF BECKER 107 VI. THE CAMERALISTICS OF SCHRODER 135 VII. THE CAMERALISTICS OF GERHARD 175 VIII. THE CAMERALISTICS OF ROHR 185 DC. THE CAMERALISTICS OF GASSER ....:. 206 X. THE CAMERALISTICS OF DITHMAR 222 XI. THE CAMERALISTICS OF ZINCKE 232 XII. THE CAMERALISTICS OF DARJES 267 XIII. THE CAMERALISTICS OF JUSTI 285 XIV. THE ARGUMENT OF JUSTI'S " STAATSWIRTHSCHAFT" 315 XV. JUSTI'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 394 XVI. JUSTI'S "POLICEYWISSENSCHAFT" 43^ XVII. JUSTI'S CAMERALISTIC MISCELLANIES .... 459 XVIII. THE CAMERALISTICS OF SONNENFELS "INTRODUC- TION" 48: XIX. THE CAMERALISTICS OF SONNENFELS "POLICE Y" 505 XX. THE CAMERALISTICS OF SONNENFELS "HAND- LUNG" 525 XXI. THE CAMERALISTICS OF SONNENFELS "HAND- LUNG UNO FINANZ' 542 XXII. SUMMARY 586 INDEX 597 PREPACK Like its predecessor in this series, Adam S;w//// and Modern Sociology, the present book is a mere fragment. It deals with a single factor of the social process in the German States. It finds this factor already effective in 1555. It does not attempt to trace each link in the chain of continuity from that date. It reviews the most important seventeenth-century writers in the line of sequence, but the emphasis of the book falls in the eighteenth century. I have carefully excluded the problem of relations between this literary factor and other social elements, and I have purposely refrained from estimating its ratio of importance among the formative forces of the period. Con- clusions of that order must come from a larger synthesis, for which the present study supplies merely a detail. To justify my belief that the labor which this book cost was well spent, it would be necessary to prove first, that Amer- icans have much to gain from better understanding of the Germans; and second, that just appreciation of the present social system of the Germans is impossible for Americans unless they are willing to trace it historically. These propositions must be left, however, without the support of argument, merely as the author's profession of faith. To readers of English only, cameralism is virtually a lost chapter in the history of the social sciences. Although every- thing now belonging to German polity has a part of its heredity in that type of social theory, not every reputable student of the social sciences in America could correctly define the term, and few could name more than one or two writers to whom it is properly applied. In a word, the cameralists were a series of German writers, from the middle of the sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth vii viil THE CAMERALISTS century, who approached civic problems from a common view- point, who proposed the same central question, and who devel- oped a coherent civic theory, corresponding with the German system of administration at the same time in course of evolution. To the cameralists the central problem of science was the problem of the state. To them the object of all social theory was to show how the welfare of the state might be secured. They saw in the welfare of the state the source of all other welfare. Their key to the welfare of the state was revenue to supply the needs of the state. Their whole social theory radiated from the central task of furnishing the state with ready means. For reasons to be mentioned later, allusions to the cameral- ists in English books, whether original or translated, are more frequent among the economists than elsewhere. If, however, we consult the two handbooks of the history of economic theory in most frequent use by students in this country, we find that they barely allude to cameralism, and their historical perspec- tive would be clearer if they did not mention the subject at all. In the second edition of Cossa, 1 Klock, Becher, Hornigk (sic), and Schroder are disposed of in a paragraph of about seventy words, and another paragraph two lines longer, in the chapter on the physiocrats (!), mentions the "Chamber Sci- ences," as represented by Justi and Sonnenfels only. The third edition of the same book, or the volume which took the place of a third edition, translated under the title An Introduction to the Study of Political Economy, mentions the same three Austrians, and adds a couple of lines on Seckendorff in the section on "Industrial Freedom;" it mentions Gasser, Dithmar, and Darjes in the section on "Professional Chairs, Newspapers, and Academies;" it gives a paragraph each to Justi and Son- 1 Translated under the supervision of Jevons, with the title, Guide to the Study of Political Economy; original first edition, 1876, second, 1878, translation, 1880. PREFACE ix nenfels, in the section entitled "Bureaucratic and Professorial Eclecticism;" and then, after a few statements thirty-four pages later, about the "German Physiocrats," it for the first time finds its bearings among German thinkers with Rau, who began to write a generation after cameralism in the strict sense had passed its prime. Ingram evidently abstracted from Roscher, by some principle of selection which does not appear, a dozen names of German "mercantilists" of the cameralistic period. The summary way in which he disposes of them shows that he had no first-hand knowledge of these writers, and that he utterly misapprehended their place in the history of German thought. If one were so fortunate as to learn the names of the cameralists, and turned to Palgrave for more information, little would be found beyond repetition of scraps gathered from Roscher; and these so disconnected that they would hardly pique curiosity to pry farther. All the other English aids to knowledge of cameralism are so scattered that an adequate introduction to the subject by means of them would be out of the question. During the last generation, American readers of German appear to have relied, as a rule, for information about early phases of German economic thought, chiefly upon two writers, Kautz 1 and Roscher. 2 Of Kautz it is enough to say that he was of the rear guard of the rhetoricians. His book is wonderfully plausible if not lucid reading. Its early pages appear to express method < logical conclusions which the maturest scholarship has not superseded. Unfortunately, the author's own procedure, as it appears in the body of the book, shows that for him these 1 Julius Kautz, Die geschichtliche Entwickelung der National- Oekonomik und ihrer Literatur, Wien, 1860. 3 Wilhelm Roscher, Geschichte der National-Oekonomik in Deutsch- land, Miinchen, 1874. In the following pages, if nothing appears to the contrary, this work is referred to whenever the author's name is used. x THE CAMERALISTS imposing propositions had merely the force of impotent general- ities. His actual method is first, derivation, by some occult means, of certain general principles under which to subsume the economists of the period; then, second, use of the writers of the period as so many illustrations of the principles. When projected upon this vicious circle, the course of thought in successive stages falls into alluring symmetry. A little inquiry into the facts, however, shows that these pleasing constructions are mainly fictitious. For example, Kautz locates the second of his three great divisions of economic ideas "between the end of the Middle Ages and Adam Smith." This second period he interprets as that of independent investigation, "in which the national- economic ideas and principles were no longer mixed and com- bined with the political, legal, and religious systems of theory, but were presented as a totality of peculiar special cognitions." 1 The truth of this generalization depends upon the standard used for measurement of relative bondage to conventionality and independence of it. Compared with the age of the school- men the period from Martin Luther to Adam Smith was of course intellectually free. On the other hand, if contempo- raries of Kautz had gone back to the economic and political theorists of the intermediate period, with no preparation but nineteenth-century ideas, they would have been amazed at the degree in which social thinking of all sorts was paralyzed by dogmatic prepossessions. Even if Kautz's generalization had been qualified in a way to make it valid, use of it as a premise from which to deduce interpretation of the economic theories of the period was like finding a sufficient explanation of the course of American experience since 1776 in terms of the mere negative condition of independence from England. Anyone who can have patience with discursive essays upon long-distance impressions of the development of economic * Loc. cit., p. 25. PREPACK XI theory would find Kautz impressive. As a guide to critical study of the actual process he is impossible. Whatever our estimate, on the other hand, of the "histori- cal school," and of Roscher's contributions to economic theory, there can be no doubt about the value of his services to economic history. The volume cited above, on the history of economic theory in Germany, has served as an almost unchallenged authority on the subject for a generation. Those who have had most occasion to work in the field which this book surveys will be most sincere in their gratitude to the author. The present volume could surely not have been written if Roscher had not blazed the way. Nevertheless, the farther I went in the studies which this book reports, the more my wonder grew that German scholar- ship had not yet produced a work which would be as evident an advance upon Roscher as he was upon Kautz. For obvious reasons such a book must be written in Germany. At the same time, comparison of the perspective of foreign scholars may be worth something as an aid in establishing the viewpoint from which the evolution of German social theories should be reconsidered. It is approximately true that knowledge of the cameralists as a group has remained as it was left by Roscher. The most general thesis of the present work is that the cameralists have not yet come to their own in the assignment of historical values. In other words, while acknowledging my debt to Roscher, I find it necessary to impeach his authority. In the first place, Roscher was essentially a collector, not an interpreter. Yet, although his chief merit was as an assembler of details, I have still been surprised at the number of times in which I have found him apparently in error about matters of fact. It was not my affair to find out whether these slips were more his fault or his misfortune. At his time the evi- dence which would have corrected the errors of detail may xii THE CAMERALISTS not have l>een accessil>le. At all events, the writers in Die allgemeine deutsche Biographic almost invariably justify more or less important modifications in Roscher's accounts of the individual careers of the cameralists. My own study of these writers has t>een confined to their books. For such biographical introduction as was necessary I have relied throughout, unless exception is noted, upon the work just named, whenever it differed from Rose her. But the chief issue with Roscher is much more radical. For a generation the world's interpretation of the cameralists has virtually been stereotyped in the form which he cast. The more sj>ecific thesis of the present work is that his version of the cameralists utterly misses their real meaning. It is a blur produced by a combination of methodological fallacy and historical nearsightedness. German scholars alone are within reach of the means fully to reconstruct the history if the thesis is sustained. I hope I am right, however, that the very dis- tance from the bulk of the sources, which compels attention to the main movement of thought, confers a distinct advantage in making out the larger meanings of the body of literature in question. In order to justify this challenge of venerable tradition, account must be taken of the immc-f liate antecedents of Roscher's b(X)k. In 1858 Leopold Ranke submitted to the Bavarian Royal Academy of Sciences a plan for a series of twenty-four volumes on the history of the sciences in Germany. The sub- jects of those volumes in the series which are most intimately related to the present issue are: (i) Gesrhichte; (2) Kriegs- ivisaensrhaft; (3) Jurisprudenz; (4) Allgemeincs Staatsredit und I'olitik; (5) Nationalokonomie und kanieralistisrhe I-tit her; (()) /^andunrthsrha/tslehre. For the convenience of the writers available, and for facility of popular exposition, these subdivi- sions were doubtless more suitable than any others that might have been proposed. As a programme for critical resean h. PREFACE xin however, the standards of today being the criterion, that divi- sion of labor surrendered the work in advance to preconception and misconstruction. A precisely analogous fallacy would be involved in a scheme today to parcel out among different scholars, in accordance with present national boundaries, an analysis of the political conditions of Europe at the time of Charlemagne. The political map of Europe in the ninth century was not as it is today, and analysis based on the con- trary assumption would deserve rejection without a hearing. But the inchoate social sciences, from the middle of the sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth, were no more homogeneous and coterminous with scientific categories at the middle of the nineteenth century than national frontiers of the ninth century retain their places in the twentieth. In other words, the Bavarian Academy did not undertake to find the centers in the past from which the evolution of the social sciences could be traced step by step and process by process. On the con- trary, it sponsored a plan which called for a conventionalizing of previous centuries in terms of nineteenth-century classifica- tion. This scheme ruthlessly inverted the rule which had been the first great historiographical commandment with promise since Savigny and Niebuhr. The result was a conspicuous vindication of the violated principle. The sort of analysis which the present volume reports very early unearths the fact that the conventional divi- sion of labor in the series threw the data out of their relations and retarded discovery of their meaning. In particular it assigned the cameralists to Roscher, 1 while it estopped analysis of them at their proper center within the scope of Bluntschli. * Using the terms in the sense in which they are understood in the United States today, the cameralists were not primarily economists. They were primarily political scientists. This 1 Under title (5) above. Title (4) above. xiv THE CAMERALISTS single perception demonstrates the unreliability of both Roscher and Bluntschli upon the cardinal question of the meaning of the cameralists for the evolution of the sciences in Germany. The first critical question to be answered in an interpretation of the cameralists is: What "was their specific purpose, the center from which they proceeded, the interest which gave the respective ratings to all their other interests ? Rarely is this question answered as promptly and as decisively as in the case of the cameralists. The answer exhibits in cameralism the germination, not of an academic abstraction, but of a whole civic polity. Turning to the defect of historical nearsightedness, a typical symptom may be taken from Bluntschli. 1 He says: The Germans applied their attention tardily to general civic science (Staatswissenschajt}. In the sixteenth century Italians and Frenchmen, in the seventeenth Dutchmen and Englishmen, and in the eighteenth Englishmen and Frenchmen were far in advance. Only by degrees did the Germans overtake these leaders, and pres- ently it was their fortune, through diligence and thoroughness of investigation, through moral earnestness of endeavor, and through the loftiness of their standpoint and the energy of their thinking, to equal the foremost and to win general recognition. In a certain sense the first two of these propositions are as true as the last. At the same time, this conventional judgment is in large part a mere survival of that obsession which filled Germany, and to a certain extent the rest of Europe, during the eighteenth century, with awe and fear of everything political made in France. In effect Bluntschli follows Weitzel 3 in can- celing the cameralists from the account, while he discusses other Germans of much less real importance for civic science. Von Mohl had meanwhile written, 3 and had really given the ' Loc. cil., p. xiv. 3 Geschichte der Slaalrajissenschajt, 2 vols., 1832-33. J Geschichte und Literatur der Staatswisscnschajten, 3 vols., 1855-58. PREFACE xv cameralists more credit than Bluntschli allows, though he docs not in principle vary from tradition. It is not necessary, if it were possible, to cloud the title of other countries to respect for their achievements in the political sciences. My conten- tion is that the Germans were not as sterile in this field as it has been their own fashion to suppose. In fact there was no more virile political thinking in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries than that of the German cameralists. I do not say that it was as profound, as abstract, as highly generalized, as political works of the first rank produced by other nations. It was suited to the occasions which set its task. It was constructive. It was effective. As in the case of all theory, in comparison with its practical counterpart, it is impossible to demonstrate how much the cameralism of the books was cause and how much effect of the cameralism of the bureaus. I do not raise that question. The same dilemma is at least as pertinent to Grotius or Locke or Montesquieu as to the cameralists; and on the ground of probable influence upon affairs the case of the latter does not on the whole suffer by comparison with any political theorists whatsoever. More- over, the plea that neither the letter nor the spirit of these technologies in any great degree molded the actual political practices of the time would, by parity of reasoning, exclude every great human document from rank among the formative forces of the period that produced it. This arbitrary measure of meaning factors in history would leave among admitted social forces not a single standardizing formutaTion -of human conduct, from the New Testament to Magna Charta and the last three amendments to the American Constitution. At all events the cameralists of the books did their share toward systematizing the polity which was most intensively developed by the Germans. Their works contain in embryo everything which has made the German system today the most effective economizer of national energy in the world. If a XVI THE CAMERALISTS tree should be known by its fruits, scholars in general, and the Germans in particular, have grossly blundered in slighting the sturdy stock from which the mighty growth of German civic theory and practice has developed. There is a contrast between Roscher's method of approach- ing the material and my own in another respect. Rose her attempts in general to exhibit the cameralists in national groups, in connection with the administrative policies of their respective princes. That he is unable strictly to carry out this plan is evident from the titles of his chapters, from the twelfth to the twentieth inclusive, viz.: "The Dutch School and the Mercan- tile System;" "The Conservative National Economics of the Middle of the Seventeenth Century;" "The National Econom- ics of the Last Great German Polyhistorian;" "The Austrian National Economics under Leopold I;" "The Prussian National Economics under the Great Elector;" "Leibniz and the Beginnings of the Halle School;" "The National Economics of Friedrich Wilhelm I;" "The National Econom- ics of Frederick the Great;" "The Older Eclectics of the Eighteenth Century." My plan, on the contrary, ignored the merely national relations of the respective authors, and treated them as nearly as possible chronologically, and as phenomena of a coherent tendency of thought. It can hardly be claimed that the last word has been said by or for either of these methods. I would simply point out that each has its advantages, and that the employment of both, at their highest efficiency, and in co-opera- tion with each other, will doubtless be involved in the pro- gramme of future historians of this period. There is nowhere between the lines of this book a wish to glorify German bureaucracy at the expense of American republicanism. The advantage to Americans of understand- ing German institutions will not come from adopting or even imitating them, but from adapting whatever may be learned PREFACE xvn from their workings to the improvement of our own institutions. The aim of this book is accordingly to find a point of departure for interpretation of German social theories and practices through their own process of evolution. The Hegelians would say it is a typical manifestation of the nature of things that the German and American polities should lend to complete each other. The one starts with the assumption of the state as t he- social unit. The other starts with the assumption of the indi- vidual as the social unit. Experience has shown that neither assumption is the whole truth, that each assumption is part of the truth, and that the social problem rests hard upon the need of a reconstruction which shall organize these two phases of the truth into a convincing basis for present social action. I venture again to express my belief that a service may be ren- dered to the American side of this assimilation by promoting acquaintance with the spirit of German polity. Taking it for granted that the best way to understand the German type of society and of social theory is through their evolution, I have undertaken to show that the trunk line of this evolution from the Reformation to the French Revolution is marked by the cameralists. This book is not a contribution to the social sciences in the sense, that it draws upon previously unknown sources. The cameralists have been catalogued over and over again. 1 Additional sources will doubtless be assembled when German scholars interest themselves in recovering this portion of their history. My effort has been rather to determine a new stand- point for explaining the sources. Nor is an attempt to put the cameralists in their proper historical perspective new in itself. Not to speak of interpretations attempted while the 1 Exhaustive study of the literature of cameralism should take, as its base of operations, Baumstark, Cameralistische Encyklopddie, 1835. The state of tradition about the meaning of the cameralists is ocular proof, however, that it is a far cry from bibliography to interpretation. xvni THE CAMERALISTS cameralistic series in the strict sense was still incomplete, we may date the beginnings of historical treatment of cameralism from Rossig. 1 Almost without exception these reviews of cameralism have been so indiscriminate that the meaning of the movement has been obscured, if not positively misrepre- sented. Thus, to take the most important instance, Roscher, in consequence of begging the methodological question at the outset, makes a hodgepodge of identities by jumbling together survivals of mediaeval legalism like Besold, political scientists of the obsolescent not the evolving type like Bornitz, political philosophers of massive mold like Pufendorf, historical phi- losophers like Moser, metaphysical philosophers like Leibniz, Wolff, and Kant, and incidentally the cameralists. Not by a valid process of analysis, but by sheer force, Roscher reduces these unlike quantities to the common denominator "econo- mist." In the same way, and perhaps even more fallaciously, Bluntschli had joined together heterogeneous elements as a continuous series in political science. I do not deny that every type of theory reacts upon every other type; but it is juvenile to assume that in any age the influence of a metaphysician and of a historian, for example, upon each other's peculiar type of thinking, is as direct and intense as that of two metaphysicians or two historians. Sometimes such cross-fertilization is more fruitful than in-and-in breeding. Again it is not. Neither is it to be assumed in a given case without proof. Nor can it be taken for granted that propositions occurring casually in one theory, but belonging primarily to another, may be carried over at face value into the theory to which they secondarily belong. For instance, a theologian might cull from every economic author of the last fifty years passages which carry some sort of theological implications. Those implications might or might not have been apparent to the authors them- 1 Versuch eincr Ceschichte der Oekonomie und Cameralwissenschajt, 2 vols., 1781. PRKFACK xix selves and intended by them. In any event it would be absurd to make a history of theology for the last fifty years by patching together such passages with others which were immediately theological in their premises and purpose. Before a truthful expression of one type of theory can be made in terms of another the mental latitude and longitude of each group of theorists, and even of each individual theorist, must be accurately deter- mined, and corrections must be made accordingly in the pre- sumptive force of their formulas. Neither Bluntschli nor Roscher properly recognized this principle. It is a marvel therefore that German scholarship has permitted the books of these authors so long to hold their place as standard accounts of the process of evolution in the German social sciences. The following pages are devoted to determining the group equation of the cameralists only. Meanwhile the little book of Marchet 1 deserves much more attention than it seems to have received, either in Europe or in this country. Indeed, I could not have expressed myself as above about the persistent authority of Roscher if I could trace in recent German literature any considerable tendency to countenance Marchet's secession. The chief reason for the neglect will doubtless be found in the tacit assumption that, since Bluntschli and Roscher, German social theory previous to the nineteenth century is to be considered as a closed incident. I must acknowledge that Marchet has very largely anticipated my conclusions, particularly upon the fabulous character of tradition with respect to German mercantilism as a theory, and as to the doctrine of population. Any competent scholar was bound to reach similar results if he analyzed the sources instead of repeating hearsay. 1 Studien fiber die Entwickelung der V erwaltungslehre in Deulschland von der tweiten Hdlfte des IJ. bis zum Ende des 18. Jahrhundcrls. Von Dr. Gustav Marchet, o. 6. Professor an der k.-k. Hochschule fiir Boden- cultur in Wien. Miinchen, 1885 (pp. viii 4-437). XX THE CAMERALISTS Until I had reached my own conclusions from examination of the original writers, I deliberately ignored the commentators as far as possible. Marchet was accordingly merely a name to me until I had completed my manuscript. This was for- tunate, because if I had been familiar with his work I could not have been sure of the independence of my own judgment. Tn matters of detail Marchet notes particulars which I had omitted, others which I had not discovered, about Seckendorff, Becher, Hornick, Schroder, and Justi. His estimate of Hornick is especially notable, as he had the advantage of access to his book and other evidence which I could not obtain. On the other hand, comparison of my own method, and its resulting interpretation, with Marchet's tends to confirm my belief that I am on the right track. In the first place, the extent to which Marchet relies on the generalization eudaemonism to explain the political philosophy of the time too closely resembles the method of Kautz. In the second place, Marchet is not suffi- ciently free from the prime fallacy of Roscher. He does not perceive that he has to deal with several distinct types of theo- rists. These must be analyzed in turn, with reference to their respective centers of attention, before a valid synthesis of their unlike doctrines is possible. That is, the same sort of analysis to which this volume subjects the cameralists must be performed upon several distinct groups of thinkers, e. g., the general phi- losophers, the political philosophers, the moral philosophers, etc. Since this particular analysis has not been applied rigor- ously by Marchet to the cameralists as such, or to either of the other groups included in his survey, his book, with all its merits, leaves these theorists still not properly differentiated, and not interpreted strictly by the functional meaning of each, in the whole process of developing a system of social doctrines. Schmoller has rescued the method of Roscher from futility by projecting the large survey within which all details of civic development, particularly in (icrmany, must be located. In PREFACE xxi his more intensive historical work Schmoller has dealt imme- diately with industrial and administrative development more than with the growth of theories. Analysis of the cameralists therefore explains one of the systems of communication, so to speak, that penetrated the territory in which Schmoller's primacy among explorers is secure. His monograph, Mer- cantilism, is the best introduction that can be recommended for the present volume. The relation of his more extended and technical treatment of the subject to the present study is indicated in the first chapter of this book. In the following pages I have tried to present a digest of everything in the writings of the leading cameralists which is necessary to an impartial conclusion about their meaning for the German social sciences. Accordingly I offer in this volume a source book containing the most pertinent evidence about the real significance of the cameralists. These sources put each reader in possession of the means of testing my conclusions, and of estimating the cameralists for himself. The only precon- ception which I carried to the study of these theorists was the historical commonplace that they must be allowed to speak for themselves, and from their own standpoint, whatever that migjit prove to be. This commonplace has had at best fitful respect among social theorists or historians of social theory. My chief interest in the cameralists is least of all antiquarian. I want to know what can be learned from them that is of per- manent use for sociological methodology. My suspicions were early aroused that the fate which had befallen them would turn out to enforce certain primary methodological laws in application to the social sciences; and first of all the law that every historical actor must be judged primarily with reference to his immediate purposes, not as though his purposes were those of the moment at which the judgment was passed. I suspected that some of the non sequiturs \\ liich are epidemic in the social sciences would be found undisguised in a com- xxii THE CAMERALISTS parison of the cameralists as they really were with the tradition of them in the histories. It seemed to me that, if this turned out to be the case, exposure of the bad logic, in an example so far in the past that it enlists no partisan prejudice, would do more to promote valid reasoning upon current questions in the social sciences than possible direct refutations of contem- porary argument. I therefore undertook a laborious historical search, not chiefly from historical interest, but for specifically methodological purposes. If historical valuations of the cameralists had mistreated them, I wanted to ferret out the precise flaw in the process, as a concrete warning against paral- lel miscarriages of judgment at present. All that I knew about the cameralists, when I began this study, I had learned from Roscher. On the general grounds indicated above, I decided that if Roscher's composite picture of so many different types did justice to each, and to the syn- thesis of them, it would be an amazing coincidence; and I determined to find out for myself whether such a phenomenon had occurred. I first studied Justi, and at once made out indications which had not appeared in Roscher's report. It was evident moreover that there were more intimate relations than a mere chronological before-and-after between Justi and other writers. Following this clue, I abstracted from Roscher's heterogeneous collection of men who had more or less directly affected economic ideas a group with like marks of species. German civic theory in general so evidently proceeds from or at least through this type of thinkers that the finding marks forthwith furnish the fixed points from which to interpret the whole evolution of German social science. Whether the record proves to contain exhibits of methodological principles, either in the breach or in the observance, is discussed in the concluding chapter. I have intentionally disobeyed the rules of good writing by retaining in the text many German words, instead of trying PREFACE xxin to propose English equivalents. This was for two chief rea- sons: first, that translation unavoidably interprets, and in the present connection it almost certainly interprets anachro- nistically. Any terms by which we might translate leading concepts of the cameralists, unless they might be careful cir- cumlocutions, would impute to them shades of meaning which would really be ours, not theirs. In another class of cases I have gone still farther in retaining German terms or even con- siderable quotations, when I judged that the matter in hand would have value only for readers somewhat familiar with German. This was both for the sake of precision and to retain local color. With the same purpose in view I have deliberately chosen awkward renderings of many German expressions. By so doing I have most accurately indicated the ideas of the various authors. In many ways their thought was not as our thought, and it is a falsification of history to make them speak as men would now. American conceptions of the growth and mean- ing of German social theory have been confused by neglect of translators to count with this elemental fact. This has been amply emphasized in the body of the book, but I add a typical instance from a different source. , While writing this preface I had occasion, in another connection, to consult the English version of Heeren's Geschichte des europiiischen Staa- tensy stems* Of European states from the beginning of the sixteenth century, Heeren is made to say: At first, therefore, the royal authority in these kingdoms was everywhere much limited. Without the aid of the nobility no important war could be carried on; without the consent of the cities no taxes could be levied. Without standing armies (a small 1 Originally published 1808-9. I re ^ er to ^ e ^h edition (1830), Vol. IX of the Historische Werke, p. 16. The English translation appeared in 1864 under the title, A Manual of the History oj the Political System oj Europe and Its Colonies. The passage is on p. 1 1. xxiv THE CAMERALISTS beginning excepted), without political economy 1 (for no art was known but that of getting money), there existed, in reality, at this time no power, in the present acceptation of the word. In the first place, Heeren's own proposition about Staat.s- U'irthschaft was a generality which would not bear rigorous criticism. In the second place, whether the author had a correct idea in mind or not, the term Staatswirthschaft itself has to be credited with a different content for every period of which it is positively or negatively predicated. It did not even have the identical connotations when Heeren's last edition was published which it had carried when the book first appeared; and never and nowhere had it meant precisely what writers or readers in England in 1864 understood by the phrase "polit- ical economy." Still further, as the following clause stands in the quotation it furnishes a second illustration of the need of paraphrase fairly to represent the original. The author's real meaning would be conveyed by the substitute: "the financial administration of states did not go beyond pro- grammes for raising revenues." Standing by themselves, these particular instances are not of firstrate importance. They are merely samples of thousands scattered through English literature of the social sciences. The aggregate effect of unhis- torical renderings of German terms, added to the unsatisfac- tory condition of the German tradition itself, is a state of regret- table misinformation among English readers about the actual course of development in German social theory and practice. I have tried, therefore, to report the cameralists in language that reflects the partial analysis actually in their minds, and which does not represent them as using nineteenth- and twen- tieth-century concepts of Germans, still less of Englishmen or Americans. 1 The italics are mine, and the author's word is Staatswirlhschajt. The next clause in parenthesis reads: man kannte nur die Kunst, Geld au/iubringen PREFACE xxv It has been my intention also to retain all archaisms and other peculiarities, even to obvious typographical errors, in quotations, titles, etc., in order to represent the exact state of the texts used. My notes, however, were reorganized several times, and were recopied by several hands. Moreover, space limits compelled me to omit an appendix which would have occupied 150 pages. It was to contain the tables of contents of the principal books cited, and other illustrative material. The retrenchment compelled frequent alterations in the body of the book. At the time of revising the proof most of the volumes used had necessarily been returned to libraries in this country and Germany. I have not been unmindful of the duty of verification, but it was thus not strictly within my power. I fear therefore that, although I have fortified myself as well as circumstances would permit against material errors, in matters of form the citations contain inaccuracies which might have been removed if the sources had been longer at my disposal. The capitalization, spelling, punctuation, etc., must accordingly be taken as illustrating rather than precisely transcribing the passages cited. My most grateful thanks are due to the Konigliche Biblio- thek at Berlin for the loan of a large number of the cameralistic works without which this book could not have been written. My obligations are equally real for similar assistance from the libraries of Harvard, Columbia, and Cornell and for important information from the British Museum. ALBION W. SMALL January i, 1909 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION TO CAMERALISM Every theory, system, science is in some way a reflection of the prevailing purposes of the time in which it developed. No hypothesis about the precise nature of the cause and effect concerned is concealed in this commonplace. We need not raise that question. Enough that in some way or other, which it is not necessary to discuss at this point, our philosophies echo the dominant purposes of the time that produced them. If we attempt to detach a system of thought from the whole scheme of activities impelled by the prevailing systems of pur- poses, and if we try to set forth the meaning of that thought as though it had no connection with those purposes, the result is inevitable misinterpretation. The same effect follows unintentional not less than delib- erate separation of a body of thought, in which we are especially interested, from the surrounding circumstances of its develop- ment. It is like abstracting a plant from the soil and atmos- phere which are the media of its existence, and then expecting it both to grow and to reveal the abstract process } the same was the attribution o] exclusive value to the precious metals.'* Consequently the effort in every possible way to acquire gold and silver, and to retain the same: hence also the anxiety for a favorable balance of trade. The means relied upon were: exclu- sive (sic) promotion of the transforming industries, and of foreign trade, especially attainable through privileges, advances of capital, precise regulations for industries, monopolies, favorable commer- 1 Bax e