I was deeply sensible of the honour of having to deliver the following Lectures to your Royal Highness, by the direction ofyour illustrious Father, upon whose virtues and wisdom I look back with a veneration which I cannot express.
It was a high gratification to me to have your Royal highness's attention given to these Lectures with that intelligence andpunctuality which your Royal Highness gave to all your University occupations.
As the matter of the Lectures requires repeated thought, I have wished, for my own satisfaction at least, to put it in a morepermanent form than a spoken lecture.
If it had pleased our Almighty Father to spare to us a little longer your great and good parent, his wisdom might haveselected for your Royal Highness's further consideration what is best worth notice in what I have said.I venture to hope thatthe great Problems which I have had to deal with in Lectures V.and VI.namely, the nature of the recent agriculturalprogress of England, and the changes which are taking place in the other parts of the vast British Empiremust be regardedby your Royal Highness with interest, even if the solutions which I have given of those problems be incomplete.
With a firm confidence that the destinies of this Land and of this Empire, so far as they depend upon your Royal Highness'sgoodness of h cart and willingness to listen to enlightened counsels, are fitll of the brightest promise, and with prayers thatyour Royal Highness may long enjoy the happiness of which you have now the near prospect, I have the honour to be Your Royal highness's Most faithful and devoted Servant, W.WHEWELL.
The following Lectures were delivered at the request of one of the wisest and best fathers who have ever lived, for theinstruction of a son on whose education he bestowed much careful thought: and indeed that education was a matter ofnational as well as of family concern, lie kindly judged that I could deliver a short course of Lectures on Political Economywhich might forward his purpose: and I willingly undertook the task, rendered acceptable by the prospect of submitting tohim afterwards the purport of what I had said in the Lectures; and of having the gratification and the advantage of hearinghis remarks, instructive and interesting as they always were.This satisfaction I was not permitted to enjoy.The All-wiseDisposer did not allow the father to see with his earthly eyes the completion of his well-devised plans for his son's education:
though I doubt not that those plans will bear their fruit in national blessings.
The scheme of the following Lectures will, I hope, carry with it its own excuse.It seemed to me unwise on such an occasionto aim at any originality beyond that which selects the best passages of writers of acknowledged authority and weighs themagainst one another.And though the extracts given in the earlier of the following Lectures may by some be thought lightlyof; as being common-places, they arc commonplaces which young men of rank, such as those to whom these Lectures wereaddressed, ought to know, and which they were not likely to learn unless they were brought before them in some such wayas this.The later extracts and the reflexions which I have added to them will be found, I think, to contain views of which theimportance is now only beginning to be duly felt.
TRINITY LODGE, Dec.18, 1862.
The following are the editions of books which arc principally referred to in the following Lectures:
Smith's Wealth of Nations , edited with Notes by J.R.Mc Culloch.5th edition, 1859.
J.R.McCulloch, Art.Political Economy in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, recast, and in 825 published as Principles ofPolitical Economy ; and in several subsequent editions.
Malthus, On Definitions in Political Economy.1831.
Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation.1817.
Chalmers's Political Economy, in connexion with the Moral State and Prospects of Society.1832.
Harriet Martineau, Illustrations of Political Economy.1832, &c.
Senior, Appendix to Whately's Elements of Logic.1848.
Travers Twiss, View of the Progress of Political Economy.1847.
Jones, On Wealth and Taxation : Part I.Rent.1831.
John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy.1848.
De Lavergne, Essai sur l'Economie Rurale de l'Angleterre.1858.
F.Bastiat, Essays on Political Economy , (English Translation.1853).
