INTRODUCTORY 
II 
concerned with what human actions should be 
in relation to wealth. Economic politics is 
all that part of politics, whether ethical or not, 
which has reference to economic facts. An 
economic art consists in a systematic expo 
sition of the methods by which a given end 
may be attained. Positive economic science 
—which I call “ positive ” in order to make 
plain that its inquiries do not proceed from 
the ethical point of view—takes as its object 
neither more nor less than the explanation 
of economic data in the manner of the natural 
sciences, or, as we may put it, the tracing of 
cause and effect in the economic universe. 
This book will be confined to matters which 
lie unmistakably within the sphere of posi 
tive economic science ; but it goes without 
saying that it has not been possible to do more 
than indicate the broad scientific results 
which have hitherto been achieved within 
this sphere. 
A systematic treatise on economics was 
comparatively late in presenting itself. In 
England the first work of this kind which 
was at all satisfactory and approximately 
complete was Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, 
but before its publication much valuable 
economic writing had appeared in this 
country from the pens of Mun, North, Child,