they came in contact with the former. History informs us that in 1165 very many were driven by persecution from the south of France and they planted themselves in the valleys of Piedmont. These were not the followers of Peter Waldo but another people, probably the Albigenses. These early inter minglings and associations, together with the horrible persecutions that were first visited upon the Albigenses, prepared the way for the first geographical and ecclesiastical amalgamation of the two sects in the valleys of Piedmont. Indeed, we have evidence of this from the testimony of their persecutors who say that routed from the south of France by the Montfort persecutions, they fled, some into the Alps, where they found secure concealment both for life and doctrine. Part migrated into Calabria, part into Germany, through the eastern Alps, and fixed their seats in Bohemia, Poland, and Livonia, and others still turned their course westward and found refuge in Britain, and some even in America. About the beginning of the fifteenth century the absorption of these two sects seems to have become complete.

We have thus traced the Armenian Paulicians from the banks of the Euphrates, in eastern Asia Minor, to the Alps of Switzerland. From 660 to 1405 their history is marked and distinct, and during all this period they alone constituted the truest representatives of an evangelical, spiritual, and missionary church. Full of energetic, spiritual life they were ever struggling to throw off from the visible establishment the accretions and observances that were destroying its life. They wrestled mightily in opposition with what had been wrapped around it, and endeavored to impart life to a church and a world by the simple gospel. The gospel was their great weapon, and this they were bound to use to enlighten a world; hence their missionary zeal. Over the whole extent of the great Byzantine empire they carried this gospel though imperial armies and fleets opposed them. But this was not enough. With a strong and living missionary agency they gave life to Italy, the south of France, the north of Spain, Flanders, Belgium, Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland. They sent thousands of living streams over all the continent so that there is not a country in Europe where there have been manifesta

tions of spiritual life but these cannot be traced back to and connected with Paulician agencies. Thus the Armenians did the great preparatory work for the reformation. This agency, as I remarked at the commencement of this Article, it seems to me we have not fully recognized, and we have not credited to the Armenians, as we ought to have done, the great work they accomplished. Will not the church of the west, after so long a time, recognize her obligations to these Christians of the east, and repay by enlarged missionary and educational efforts the great work they accomplished long ago for Europe and for America?

ARTICLE VIII.—THE METHOD OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.

MR. MILL has somewhere remarked that political economy enjoys an advantage over other sciences, in that its technical terms are all words in common use. At first thought this advantage seems considerable. The study is relieved from that air of difficulty and abstruseness that a scientific terminology always imparts, and it is on that account undoubtedly more attractive to a learner. Like one who reads a treatise in the vernacular instead of a foreign tongue, he seems to contend only with the intrinsic difficulties of the subject, and to be brought face to face with them at once, without having first to tear aside a veil of mysterious expression.

But this advantage is dearly bought. It is absolutely indispensable to the successful development of a science, that its classifications should be definite, and the meaning of its principal terms free from ambiguity. A word in common use, however, is always ambiguous. It is so from necessity; for while the lexicographers are fixing the definition of a word, the great tide of human life has swept it beyond them. It was made to be used, and it will be used for whatever purpose men find it convenient, so long as the language is a living one. Men of science may agree among themselves that certain words shall mean certain things, but they cannot impose their definitions upon the world; and, if the words that they have chosen are in popular use, misunderstanding is sure to result. A trained logician may apprehend an argument couched in ambiguous terms, but the generality will put upon it such construction as the words suggest to their mind, without regard to the preferences, or even to the stipulations, of the author.

Moreover, a science that has no exclusive nomenclature is at the mercy of those half-educated visionaries who are constantly trying to pass off their crude opinions as scientific theories. Where there is no such protecting shibboleth, they are able to discourse without hindrance concerning the matters of which the science treats, and the public, having no means

of distinguishing the false prophets from the true, is involved in a mischievous confusion. The errors and absurdities that are published are attributed to the science itself instead of to their individual authors, and a whole department of knowledge, perhaps, is thus brought into disrepute.

Such we conceive to have been the fate of political economy, and such to have been the cause of its fate. It has never lacked bitter assailants, but of recent years it has become the fashion with writers of a certain class both in England and this country, to speak of it as unworthy of serious consideration. It is denied that it has any standing or even any existence as a science, and if the science is to be considered as made up of all that has been written upon economic subjects, the contempt into which it has fallen may not be undeserved. But it is obviously unreasonable to adopt such a criterion. Theology is a science, but it is not composed of the sermons and lectures and newspaper discussions of religious questions of which the world is full. It is true that the body of doctrine which constitutes a science can never be absolutely fixed. It must inevitably grow with the increase of knowledge, and receive additions from many different hands. We cannot appeal to any infallible test in order to know whether the results brought forward by investigators or speculators in any department are a valid addition to the truth already in our possession, or whether they are mere delusions, to devote time to which would be a wasteful folly. We can, however, by examining the methods employed, determine the probable value of the conclusions. The laws of valid reasoning and investigation are well known, and any deviation from them leads so demonstrably to fallacious results that we are, in almost every instance, justified in judging the result by the method employed to obtain it. It is conceivable that a man may violate every mathematical law, and yet hit upon the correct answer to a problem. A man may commit every fallacy known to logi cians and yet enunciate an important truth. But it is not very often that such an event occurs, and it can never be said that the result is due to anything but chance, which science, dealing only with law, cannot properly consider. The true way therefore to test the claims of any accepted scientific doctrine, as

well as those of any proposed substitute or modification, is to examine the methods employed in establishing it, for if these be faulty we may be sure that the results will not be sound.

But as in scientific investigation the method is governed by the subject, we need at the outset to determine wherewith political economy is concerned. Its aim, therefore, may be stated to be the explanation of such of the phenomena of society as arise from the industrial operations of mankind; the phenomena of the production and distribution of valuable material objects. It seeks to ascertain the laws which govern these phenomena, so that the effects may be referred to their true causes, and mankind be guided in the alteration of these effects in such manner as is desired; or what is equally important, that it may be known when it is vain to attempt such alteration. It can never predict the future with the precision of astronomy, but it can render to society the services that physiology renders to the individual. It is a branch of the science of human nature, which exists, as Mr. Mill has said, in proportion as the approximate truths which compose a practical knowledge of mankind, can be exhibited as corollaries from the universal laws of human nature upon which they rest, whereby the proper limits of those approximate truths would be shown, and we should be enabled to deduce others for any new state of circumstances in anticipation of specific experience.

We claim that such a science has been developed by the political economists of England. As we have said, not every writer upon economic questions is an economist, nor does the science consist of all that has been written about it. Leaving out of view therefore, a number of co-workers, many of whom have contributed valuable material, we maintain that the true principles of political economy are embodied in the works of five great writers, Smith, Malthus, Ricardo, Mill, and Cairnes. To these names that of Sidgwick will probably be added. Other principles remain to be discovered; new applications are continually to be made; but the general method pursued by these authors is the proper one, and the only one by which any conclusions of permanent scientific or practical value can be obtained.

We shall be better prepared to support this position, if we