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ADVANTAGES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.
In the year 1825, Henry Drummond, Esq. of Albury Park, Surrey, and formerly of Christchurch, subjected his estate in Surrey with a yearly rent-charge of 100_l._ for the endowment of a professorship in Political Economy, under certain conditions. Mr. Senior, whose name is not unknown to students of political economy, has been appointed first professor, and in his first lecture gives the following illustration of the advantages of the science:—
If we compare the present situation of the people of England with that of their predecessors at the time of Caesar’s invasion; if we contrast the warm and dry cottage of the present labourer, its chimney and glass windows, (luxuries not enjoyed by Caesar himself,) the linen and woollen clothing of himself and his family, the steel, and glass, and earthenware with which his table is furnished, the Asiatic and American ingredients of his food, and above all, his safety from personal injury, and his calm security that to-morrow will bring with it the comforts that have been enjoyed to-day; if, I repeat, we contrast all these sources of enjoyment with the dark and smoky burrows of the Brigantes or the Cantii, their clothing of skins, their food confined to milk and flesh, and their constant exposure to famine and to violence, we shall be inclined to think those who are lowest in modern society richer than the chiefs of their rude predecessors. And if we consider that the same space of ground which afforded an uncertain subsistence to a hundred, or probably fewer, savages, now supports with ease more than a thousand labourers, and, perhaps, a hundred individuals beside, each consuming more commodities than the labour of a whole tribe of Ancient Britons could have produced or purchased, we may at first be led to doubt whether our ancestors enjoyed the same natural advantages as ourselves; whether their sun was as warm, their soil as fertile, or their bodies as strong, as our own.