Wealth and Welfare

THOUGH the tide of this book adds " of the Punjab "-—and must thu^ limit its circulation, espedaUy in Britain, whose invindble ignorance of India persists, de^ite all ui^ency of need to mitij^te it, as our writer peculiarly tends and helps to do—it is espmally reviewed here as a real and solid contribution to economics, and of the kind most urgently needed by its students in this country, as weU as India. ECONOMICS, for Mr. Caivert, is not merely, or eveai mainly, the study of •" the Market," ruled by its gods of *' supply and demand." Nor does it turn upon " Manufactures and Commerce," as for Adam Smith; nor yet on " Capital," as since Ricardo ; and yet as little on Marx's turning of those arguments outside in, towards the apotheosis of " Labour," meaning essentially the urban and mechanical proletariat, with resultant exasperation accordingly from Socialism since his publication, to Bolshevism to-day. WHAT Mr. Caivert has done has been to recover for himself the essential truths of economics as seen by Vauban and the Physiocrais, from whom Adam Smith arose, and most unhappily departed, instead of developing as he should have done. In a word, his economics is ^mdammtally Rural economics: and from his first prefatory page he stoutly carri^ his war with the conventional urban economics into England as well as India— citing for the former also Mr. CoUett—"The ignorance of the urban majority in this country on agricultural matters is so colossal and so genuine -as almost to deserve respect."