A SKETCH OF SOCIALISTIC THOUGHT IN ENGLAND 655
the historical school. Bagehot said of the classical political economy in his Economic Studies, 1880, "It is a convenient series of deductions from assumed axioms which are never quite true, which in many times and countries would be utterly untrue, but which are sufficiently near to the principal conditions of the modern English world to make it useful to consider them by themselves." Stanley Jevons (On the Future of Political Economy, 1876) and Cliffe Leslie (Essays, Moral and Political, 1879) fol- lowed Bagehot in the development of the historical school. The gigantic work of Thorold Rogers on Agriculture and Prices had been appearing from 1866 to 1882, to be followed by Work and Wages in 1884. Cunningham's Growth of English Industry and Commerce was first issued in 1882. In 1881-2 Arnold Toynbee delivered at Oxford his lectures on the "Industrial Revolution." Since that time the inductive method has been in the ascend- ancy in England. Whatever be the faults of Henry George's Progress and Poverty, which appeared about this time, its theories were founded on a startling array of facts. Even Marx's Capital, r l the English translation of which appeared in 1883. although its deductions influenced certain socialist bodies, contributed, by its exhaustive treatment of capitalistic production, valuable material for the inductive students. This material is still used, while his theories are rejected by the thoughtful English socialist. The following declaration of Professor Ingram in the Encyclopaedia Britannic a (Article, Political Economy) would probably be accepted by all the leading English economists of the last dec- ade : " It cannot be permanently our business to go on amending and limiting the Ricardian doctrines and asking by what special interpretations of phrases or additional qualifications they may still be admitted as having a certain value. The time for a new construction has arrived." That new construction has been taking place in the hands of the younger economists ever since. By the legislation of 1875 trade unions were assured an unin- terrupted development which has been wonderfully realized. In 1884 the last great reform act was passed, extending the franchise to more voters than had received it by the two previous acts.
