The liberal Elements in English Mercantilism

Part XI

The English mercantilist doctrine a predecessor of economic liberalism where it can

be useful to compare it with other interpretations.

The Aristotelian and medieval conception, the exchange is doomed if its purpose is
more than the satisfaction of limited desires. That is wrong if it becomes a means of
expressing acquisitive desires because these in themselves are improper. In its
practical aspect, the concept makes the exchange a useless or sterile act and
imposes numerous controls over her. When mercantilists are viewed in this way, two
conclusions are generally drawn for the benefit of another, does not bring any
advantage to the public.

The economics of mercantilism talks about how the mercantilists considered money
to be the source of wealth and therefore it increased its offer as the metal became a
monetary good, another theory was the mercantilist doctrine as a collection of
equivocal ideas, from another point of view the mercantilists were considered
rudimentary economists who managed to identify the problems and the importance
of them, but with time this led them to their own defeat, the best known theories of
the mercantilists were written by Jhon Hales.

The modern economy has expressed some more rigorous principles but they have
not altered them because it is still considered that the unequal rates of profit will
provoke a reallocation of transferable resources, in the last years there has been an
attempt to reintegrate the theory of currency and prices in order to bring together the
real sides of the economy, which is one of the achievements sought by the
mercantilists, another theory is that the mercantilists were considered apologists for
the type of economy in which they lived.

Economists are always interested in the problems of the epoch of which some
problems are transitory and others are eternal. Director Schomoller stated that the
principle of mercantilism was the identity between the political and the economic,
therefore, the economic conduct of each individual was made to fit the objectives of
the state, i.e. a system of national power and one of several forms that idealism can
take as a political philosophy.

The mercantilists adopted the Aristotelian idea in which the exchange was unnatural,
because it accused men of losing sight of the proper use of basic products, which
was consumption and for making improper use of them. In the English writings about
mercantilists only one statement has been found that somehow suggests the
Medieval Notion of Exchange, but according to Cary who is not sure that he
supported the medieval idea, states that the price mechanism is anything but
medieval, but it should be clarified that the mercantilists declared that self-interest
was hostile to the public good, The type of economy they proposed could not have
functioned without the expression of self-interest, as proposed by the classicists'
economy, could not have operated without it. They also condemned self-interest, but
neither they nor the mercantilists believed it totally bad or even mainly, and did not
want it suppressed. Both wanted the power it gave to men to be used in the national
interest.

Source: The liberal Elements in English Mercantilism (William D. Grampp) “The

Quartely Journal og Economics, Vol 66, No. 4 (Nov., 1952) pp. 465-501”