Mill’s explanation of the success of the aristocratic governments of Rome and Venice is, that they were, in fact, bureaucracies; that is to say, their members were trained in the science and art of administration and command.  Here, again, we have, no doubt, a real condition; but is it the only one?  The popular mind, which little relishes the scaling down of Mill’s original law to those two remote cases, is persuaded that an aristocracy is the depository of hereditary virtue, especially with reference to government, and would at once ascribe to this circumstance the greater part of the success of any aristocratic constitution.  Now, if the effects of training are inherited, they must, in an hereditary aristocracy, increase the energy of the cause assigned by Mill; but, if not, such heredity is a condition “not present or not operative.”  Still, if families are ennobled for their extraordinary natural powers of administration or command (as sometimes happens), it is agreed on all hands that innate qualities are inheritable; at least, if care be taken to intermarry with families similarly distinguished, and if by natural or artificial selection all the failures among the offspring be eliminated.  The Spartans had some crude notion of both these precautions; and if such measures had been widely adopted, we might deduce from the doctrine of heredity a probability in favour of Mill’s original proposition, and thereby verify it in its generality, if it could be collected from the facts.

The Historical Method may be further illustrated by the course adopted in that branch of Social Science which has been found susceptible of the most extensive independent development, namely, Economics.  First, by way of contrast, I should say that the abstract, or theoretical treatment of Economics follows the Physical Method; because, as Mill explains, although the phenomena of industry are no doubt influenced, like other social affairs, by all the other circumstances of Society, government, religion, war, art, etc.; yet, where industry is most developed, as in England and the United States, certain special conditions affecting it are so much the most important that, for the purpose at least of a first outline of the science, they may conveniently be considered as the only ones.  These conditions are:  (1) the general disposition of men to obtain wealth with as little trouble as possible, and (2) to spend it so as to obtain the greatest satisfaction of their various desires; (3) the facts that determine population; and (4) the tendency of extractive industry, when pushed beyond a certain limit without any improvement in the industrial arts, to yield “diminishing returns.”  From these premises it is easy to infer the general laws of prices, of wages and interest (which are the prices of labour and of the use of capital), and of rent; and it remains to verify these laws by comparing them with the facts in each case; and (if they fail to agree with the facts) to amend them, according to the Method of Residues, by taking account of those influential conditions which were omitted from the first draft of the theory.