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INTRO  D  UCTION

and  only  really  efficacious  incentive  to  all  productive  activity,
all  good  economic  administration,  and,  above  all,  all  improvement. ­
  No  doubt  laws  and  regulations  might  modify  the
conditions  under  which  competition  acts,  so  as  to  place  competitors ­
  more  upon  an  equality,  and  to  effect  that,  each  man
possessing  the  requisites  of  production,  no  one  should  be
obliged  to  accept  insufficient  wages  through  fear  of  starvation.
True  freedom  of  contract  in  that  case  existing,  competition,
which  is  the  indispensable  mainspring  of  the  economic  world,
would  be  freed  from  the  greater  part  of  the  disastrous  effects
now  laid  to  its  charge.
Ranke,  the  historian,  has  shown  how  Protestantism,  by  its
very  attacks  upon  the  Papacy,  provoked  a  reform  in  the  bosom
of  the  Romish  Church  whereby  new  life  was  infused  into  her.
In  the  same  way,  the  wisest  Economists  of  our  time  have  recognized ­
  that  the  exaggerated,  but  often  well  founded,  criticisms
passed  upon  our  social  system  by  Socialists,  have  been  the
means  of  producing  undoubted  progress  in  Political  Economy.
Thus  Economists  used  to  affirm  that  our  social  organization
was  the  result  of  “natural  laws,”  and  itself  constituted  “the
natural  order  of  things.”  It  followed,  as  Cairnes  observes,  that
the  well-to-do  classes  gathered  from  the  writings  of  the  Economists ­
  the  comfortable  conviction  that  the  existing  world  was
not  far  off  from  perfection,  and  were  thus  led  to  reject  without
examination  any  idea  of  a  better  organization  as  chimerical.
Nowadays  most  Economists  recognize  that  everything  concerning ­
  the  distribution  of  wealth  is  the  result  of  laws  and
customs  which  have  varied  at  different  times,  and  that,  consequently, ­
  a  more  strict  application  of  justice  might  introduce
a  great  improvement.  Formerly  Economists  occupied  themselves ­
  principally  with  the  increase  of  production,  while  they
merely  described  the  distribution  of  wealth  without  examining
if  it  was  conformable  to  justice,  and  studied  labour  merely  as
the  natural  agent  of  production.  To-day  we  recognize  more
and  more  that  the  question  which  overshadows  all  others  is
that  of  distribution,  that  every  problem  must  be  considered,
especially  in  its  moral  and  juridical  aspect,  and  that  the  just
reward  of  the  workman  is  what  is  most  important  when  con-