7 
POLITICAL ECO] 
CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTORY 
This book is in no sense historical or concerned 
with social development. Its scope is confined 
to things as they are in communities which 
have reached a certain stage of civilisation ; 
and its purpose is to offer general explanations 
of these things, so far as they are economic, 
without tracing their evolution. Such ex 
planations make up the elements of political 
economy, according to the commonest concep 
tion of that study. Business affairs will 
not be handled in this work in any great 
detail, but the fundamental characteristics 
of economic generalising of the kind indicated 
will be pretty thoroughly explored. 
The explanations that will be presented are 
those which became current after the exact 
analysis begun by devons and Léon Walras 
had been perfected and applied to the whole 
field of economic phenomena by later writers,