needs." The most urgent of these are food, shelter, and clothing: and so Plato goes on to picture a state or society of the simplest kind as consisting of a husbandman, a builder, a weaver, a shoemaker, and perhaps a few other craftsmen supplying their own and each other's wants. This need not be understood as if Plato thought that states actually arose in every case through different kinds of economic producers coming together and making a "social contract." The conception of the origin of society in a contract was known to him (see Rep. II. 359 A); it had doubtless been propounded by some of the Sophists or popular philosophers of the time. But he himself in

the Laws (III. 676 seq.) puts forward very clearly the same theory of the growth of political society out of the patriarchal family, which Aristotle adopts in his Politics (I. 2), though, in the difficulty generally felt by the ancients of conceiving a beginning of civilisation, the patriarchal families out of which our societies are said to have been developed are supposed to be the survivors of some earlier city-states destroyed by a deluge. What Plato says in Rep. II. may fairly be interpreted as a recognition of the economic basis of all political society. He sees the significance of the division of labour, arguing that it is expedient that each worker should produce that commodity which he can produce best in excess of his own requirements, and exchange this commodity for the products of others, rather than that every one should distribute his time among various pursuits so as to supply all his own needs (369 E, 370 A). It is to be noted, however, that this division of labour is not based by Plato solely on the economic advantage in respect of the quality and quantity of production, but also on the supposed natural differences of individuals. "All things are produced in greater abundance and better in quality and more easily, when one man does one thing which is natural to him and does it at the right time and leaves other things alone" (370 c, cp. Laws, VIII. 846 E). Besides the producers of commodities directly used for the support of life, there must be producers of the instruments those workers require. And for the exchange of commodities with other states there must be merchants (uπороi, 371 A), and for exchange within the state- -Plato thinks only of a small city-state--we must have retail dealers (Kámot, 371 D), who ought to be persons physically unfit for other kinds of labour. From the skilled producers, whom he thinks of as independent workers, Plato distinguishes as à separate class the unskilled labourers for hire.

The consideration of foreign commerce leads Plato to remark that "what they produce at home must be not only enough for themselves, but such both in quantity and quality as to

accommodate those from whom their wants are supplied" (371 A). In this we may see an implicit recognition that imports and exports must balance one another. But Plato has no "mercantile theory" to lead him astray, nor to suggest the full significance of the problems of foreign trade. In the Laws (IV. 705 a, b) Plato expresses the opinion, like Aristotle after him (Pol. VII. c. 5 and 6), that a state should as far as possible be self-sufficing and not dependent on foreign imports; but he prohibits duties on imports and exports (Laws, VIII. 847 B). The mention of exchange in Rep. II. suggests the purpose of money (vómoμa): "From the practice of buying and selling will arise money as a token, or conventional sign for the sake of exchange” (ξύμβολον τῆς ἀλλαγῆς čveka, 371 B).

When Socrates in Plato's dialogue has described the simple sort of life which will be led in this "political society on its lowest terms" (ʼn ȧvaykaiotátŋ wóλis, Rep. 369 D), the description is scoffed at by Glaucon, one of the speakers in the dialogue, as that of a "city of pigs" (372 D). In this passage there is almost certainly an allusion to the cynic ideal of the "return to nature and the simplification of life-a Hellenic anticipation of Rousseauism. To meet the demand of Glaucon for a more elaborate ideal, Socrates proceeds to consider a state on a larger scale. But in the discussions to which this leads, on war, education, art, religion, etc., there is nothing of specially economic interest, except the rigid division into classes which is held to be the logical consequence of the principle of division of labour, one man, one trade." In a wellregulated state, rulers, warriors, husbandmen, artizans should each form separate classes or castes, though individuals may occasionally have to be transferred from one caste to another, when they show higher or lower capacities than those of the caste in which they are born (Rep. III. 412-415). Slavery would not be necessary in Plato's ideal state, where the needs of life are met by the labour of subject classes of citizens; but he seems to take for granted that there will be slaves even in his ideal state, though he objects to the enslavement of Greek by Greek (V. 469 B). The community of goods, which, along with the abolition of the private family and the admission of women to the same occupations as men, Plato holds to be necessary in the most perfect state (Rep. III. 416 D-417 B; IV. 423 E, 424 A; V. 449-466), is not proposed as a solution of economic difficulties. In fact Plato, as Aristotle rightly complains in Pol. II. 5, § 18, never discusses whether communism is to be applied to the labouring classes or not. Plato advocates communism on ethical and not on economic grounds. The philosopher-rulers of the ideal state should have no private in

terests of property or of family to divert them from their public duties. They are to live like soldiers in barracks with common meals, etc., such as there were at Sparta. Thus if we seek for later parallels to Plato's ideal state, we should find them, not so much in any of the modern communistic or socialistic idealsthough Plato's Republic is directly or indirectly the parent of most of them-as in the communism of monastic orders or in the rule of the Jesuit missionaries in Paraguay (see Kaufmann, Socialism and Communism in their Practical Application, S.P.C.K., 1883), which, if we substitute priests for philosophers, forms the most remarkable realisation of Plato's ideal state that the world has ever seen. The state in which wealth, instead of philosophic virtue, provides the ruling principle is oligarchy-one of the corrupt forms of government. In his account of oligarchy, in Rep. VIII., Plato seems to be thinking mainly of commercial states such as Corinth. In such states there comes to be one city of the rich and one of the poor, and the evils of debt prepare the way for revolution and for "the tyrant" who begins by posing as "the people's friend."

In the Laws, which Plato wrote later than the Republic, and probably in his old age, he still speaks of communism of property as essential to the best state; but he is now content to work out the plan of a "second-best state" in which, giving up community of goods as too high an ideal for average human nature, he proposes equality of property in land (V. 739, 740). Citizenship is to be limited to those owning land and engaged in agriculture. The number of citizens, i.e. of heads of households for the private family is retained in the second-best state-and owners of allotments, is fixed at 5040, a number convenient for subdivision (737 E, 738 A). None of the citizens is to be an artizan or to engage in trade, whether as merchant or retail dealer (VIII. 846 D; XI. 919 D). The lots of land are to be equal in value at the foundation of the state, inferior quality being compensated by larger size (V. 745 c), and the original equality is to be maintained as far as possible through regulation of the population under the advice and direction of the elder citizens. If need be, an excess of population is to be relieved by colonisation (740 D, E); a deficiency, but only in case of absolute necessity, is to be met by the admission of new citizens (741 A). Gold and silver coin are not to be owned by private persons, who are to employ a coinage current only within the state, though for the needs of intercourse with foreign countries the state must use a currency that will be accepted elsewhere (742 A). With respect to property other than land, absolute equality is regarded as unattainable. The citizens are to be divided into four classes according to their possessions,

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the lowest class consisting of those who have only the original lot of land; but no one is to be allowed to acquire more than four times this amount of property. Anything beyond this limit of wealth is to go to the state and "the gods of the state" (744 B-745 A). A proposal that every citizen's allotment of land should be in two sections, one nearer the city and one farther away, is adopted from quite other than economic reasons; it is a method of equalising the value of the property (745 c). This proposal is objected to by Aristotle in Pol. II. 6, § 15, as inconvenient; but, like very many other things in Plato's Laws, it is adopted by Aristotle himself in his ideal state for the same reason of equality, and in order that there may be unanimity among the citizens in case of war and threatened invasion (Pol. VII. 10, § 11). Though Plato prohibits the taking of interest on loans (Laws, XI. 921 D), and even refuses to enforce by law the repayment of borrowed capital (V. 742 c), he allows interest to be charged on overdue accounts (921 D).

Economic matters are hardly referred to in any other of Plato's dialogues. In the Sophist (219 A-c) a distinction is drawn between those arts which are productive or creative (Texval TOINTIKαl) and those which are acquisitive (KTηTIKαl); but the subdivisions of the latter class are fanciful rather than scientific. The dichotomies of this dialogue are an ironical method of describing the nature of the sophist, and not a serious attempt at a classification of the arts. The classification of the different forms of property in the Statesman (Politicus, 287-289) are somewhat less artificial and, along with the passage in Rep. II. 369 B-371 E already referred to, may be regarded as preparing the way for the treatment of economics in Aristotle's Pol. I. 8-11.

The subject of wealth is throughout treated by Plato from the ethical point of view. He distinguishes in the scale of good things three grades: (1) the goods of the soul, i.e. wisdom, self-control, and the other virtues; (2) health, the good of the body; (3) wealth. The lower only exists for the sake of the higher good, and pursuit of it is always to be limited and determined by consideration for the higher. (Laws, V. 743 E; IX. 870 B; cp. Arist. Eth. Nic. I. 8, § 2).

The Eryxias, a short dialogue which has come down to us among the works of Plato, but which even the ancient critics agreed in considering spurious, deals with the subject of wealth in the spirit of this ethical estimate of the respective values of good things. The popular opinion that wealth consists in a quantity of money is refuted by the argument that there exist intrinsically worthless currencies, such as the leather coins or tokens used at Carthage, the worthless pieces of iron used in Lacedæmon, and the engraved stones used in Ethiopia.

The possession of quantities of such things will not make a man wealthy elsewhere (Eryx. 399 E400 B). Wealth is shown to be what is useful to any one; what is useless to any one— e.g. a house to the nomad Scythian-is not wealth. More particularly wealth is found to be that class of useful things which supplies the wants of the body (400 B-401 E). The writer comes very near to putting in the additional qualification that they must be exchangeable; for he argues that those have wealth who possess arts by teaching which—“in exchange for which" (avT TOUTwv)—they can supply their wants (402 D). But from this economic point of view he passes on to the ethical conclusion that, since he who has the fewest desires is best off, the wisest may be the richest and the rich man the worst off (405 c-406; cp. 394 A). This dialogue has been ascribed by modern scholars, but on mere conjecture, to various members of the Socratic circle, such as Simon the cobbler or Eschines Socraticus, or to a pupil of Plato or of Antisthenes. It contains nothing really inconsistent with Plato's genuine works, but it probably represents the Cynic point of view, afterwards adopted by the Stoics. We may compare the Stoic paradox elaborated by Cicero (Paradoxa 6)-"That the wise alone is wealthy" (Non cupidum esse pecuniae est). The writer, if later than Aristotle, which there seems no necessity to suppose, is in any case not influenced by Pol. I. 8-11. The Eryxias, being the oldest book we know of which isolates the subject of wealth for examination, may be called the earliest treatise on political economy; but it is so only in the sense in which RUSKIN's later writings are economic treatises.

[J. Bonar, Philosophy and Political Economy (1893). Bk. i. ch. i. contains a full discussion of Plato.-Jowett's Translation of Plato, third edition, 1892, contains a translation of the Eryxias. On that dialogue cp. W. L. Newman's note on Aristotle's Politics, I. 9, 1257 b, 11, and C. Ritter, Untersuchungen über Plato (Stuttgart, 1888), pp. 84-86. On the influence of Plato's Rep., see arts. CABET; CAMPANELLA; HARRINGTON ; MORE; UTOPIAS.]

PLAY, LE, see LE PLAY.

D. G. R.

PLAYFAIR, WILLIAM (1759-1823), attempted in his youth with little success to combine the positions of inventor and tradesman. He went to Paris, and in 1789 became agent to an American Land Company, the operations of which were disastrous to those sent out.

soon

of forged assignats. In the Gentleman's Mag. (1823, pt. i. 564) is an imperfect list of forty. one pamphlets and books, among which, besides those mentioned below, are—

A General View of the Actual Force and Resources of France, 1793.-Better Prospects to the Merchants and Manufacturers of Great Britain. 1793.-Letter to Sir Wm. Pulteney on the establishment of another Public Bank in London, 1797.Statistical Tables, from the German of Boetticher, 1800. Statistical Account of the U.S. from the French, 1807.

[The Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 45.]

...

H. E. E.

He published anonymously in 1785 The Increase of Manufactures a proposal to establish a fund for lending sums of money at an interest suited to the circumstances of each case. In 1786 appeared The Commercial and Political Atlas (brought up to date in two successive editions 1787 and 1801), remarkable for the application of the graphical method to the statistics of finance. The method is thus introduced :-" :-"Suppose the money that we pay in any one year for the expense of the navy were in guineas, and that these guineas were laid down upon a large table in a straight line and touching each other, and those paid next year were laid down in another straight line, and the same continued for a number of years, these lines would be of different lengths as there were fewer or more guineas; and they would make a shape, the dimensions of which would agree exactly with the amount of the sum (Atlas, 1st edition; the illustration is varied in subsequent versions). By this method "as much information may be obtained in five minutes as would require whole days to imprint on the memory by a table of figures." Thus ordinates at points on a horizontal line represent the amount of exports and of imports at each epoch; the difference between them-forming a stream of varying width-represents the balance of trade. That Playfair should give prominence to this conception is remarkable, as his observations on our trade with France evidence a just sense of the mutual interests of the parties to international trade.

“1f

The Real Statement of the Finances and Resources of Great Britain, 1796, contains some good remarks on the depreciation of money. money should decrease in value faster than the debts increase, then the burdens of the people, though nominally augmenting, may be actually diminishing." The rudimentary idea of an index number may be noticed in the Appendix, p. 29.

In the Inquiry into the... Causes of the Decline and Fall of... Nations, which appeared in 1805, Playfair pretends to apply his method to In the preface he acknowledges obligation to his brother Professor John Playfair for the idea of the new method. In the same year (1805) Playfair published an edition of Wealth of Nations, which contains some acute criticisms; for instance, on Adam SMITH's doctrine that "the more a man pays for the tax the less he cau afford to pay for the rent [of a house] (Wealth of Nations, bk. v. ch. ii.); and on Sir Matthew

DECKER'S observation approved by Adam Smith that "certain taxes are in the price of certain goods, sometimes repeated and accumulated four or five times (ib.). These are supplementary chapters on occurrences in finance subsequent to Adam Smith's time, and on the French "Economists." Playfair evinces some acumen as an economist as well as some originality as a

statistician.

...

The Increase of Manufactures, Commerce, and Finance, with the Extension of Civil Liberty proposed in Regulations for the Interest of Money, 1785 (anonymous).-The Commercial and Political Atlas representing by Means of Stained CopperPlate Charts, the Exports, Imports, and General Trade of England; the National Debt, and other Public Accounts; with Observations and Remarks. by William Playfair, author of Regulations for the Interest of Money, 1786 (2nd ed. 1787, 3rd ed. 1801).-The Statistical Breviary, shewing, on a Principle entirely New, the Resources of every State and Kingdom in Europe; illustrated with Stained Copper Plate Charts, representing the Physical Powers of each Distinct Nation with ease and perspicuity, by William Playfair, to which is added a similar exhibition of the ruling powers of Hindostan, 1786 (and later editions).-For the Use of the Enemies of England; a Real Statement of the Finances and Resources of Great Britain; illustrated by Two Copper Plate Charts, by William Playfair, inventor of Lineal Arithmetic, 1796.-Lineal Arithmetic; applied to show the Progress of the Commerce and Revenue of England during the Present Century; which is represented by 33 Copper-Plate Charts. Being an Useful Companion for the Cabinet and Counting-House, by William Playfair, inventor of this method of stating accounts.-An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations, illustrated by four Engraved Charts, by William Playfair, author of Notes and Continuation of an Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith, LL.D., and Inventor of Lineal Arithmetic, Designed to show how the Prosperity of the British Empire may be prolonged, 1805.-An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith, LL.D.; the eleventh edition, with notes, supplementary chapters, and a life of Dr. Smith, by William Playfair, 1805.— A Letter on our Agricultural Distresses, their Causes and Remedies, accompanied with Tables and Copper Plate Charts, Shewing and Comparing the Prices of Wheat Bread and Labour from 1565 to 1821. Addressed to the Lords and Commons, by William Play fair.

F. Y. E.

PLEASURE AND PAIN are the only motives taken account of in political economy in so far as "it makes entire abstraction of every other passion or motive but the desire for wealth; except those which may be regarded as perpetually antagonising principles to the desire of wealth, namely, aversion to labour and desire of the present enjoyment of costly indulgences" (MILL, Unsettled Questions, p. 138). This abstraction, legitimate within limits, is liable to be strained too far in several directions.

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(1) Because economic action is ascribed to UTILITY, it is not to be taken for granted that, as utilitarians have postulated, all action is motived by pleasure. For perhaps "all that

mathematical economics need to assume is that a material quantity of goods will be in a certain proportion to a greater or less strength of motive; whether the motive be taken as pleasure' or not is not essential" (Bonar, Philosophy and Political Economy, p. 224; cp. Sidgwick, Pol. Econ., bk. i. ch. ii. § 2 note; Marshall, Princ. of Econ., 3rd ed., pp. 77, 78, note, 5th ed. bk. i. ch. ii; and Economic Journal, vol. iii. p. 388). However, when equilibrium is regarded as the position of greatest advantage to all concerned (cp. Marshall, Principles of Economics, 3rd ed., 526-527, and note xiv.), the mechanical analogue being not so much the equality of forces (conceived by Jevons in his analogy of the lever, Theory, ch. iv.) as the maximum of energy (indicated by Irving Fisher in his Mathematical Investigation), there is taken for granted the possibility of summing up pleasures which some opponents of utilitarianism have refused to grant.

(2) For the most abstract part of economics, the theory of exchange, it need not be postulated that each party acts from self-interest, but only that he is not actuated by regard for the interest of the other parties, those with whom he competes or bargains. The efforts and sacrifices which are required to supply markets including the labour market and the loan market-are often incurred for the sake of one's family rather than oneself. The action of the family affections "has always been fully reckoned with by economists, especially in relation to the distribution of the family income between its various members, the expenses of preparing children for their future career, and the accumulation of wealth to be enjoyed after the death of him by whom it has been earned (Marshall, Principles of Economics, bk. i. ch. v. § 7, 3rd ed.).

(3) The limits within which self-interested action must be postulated may be even narrower than those indicated in the last paragraph. What is postulated is that action should be regular and therefore calculable, rather than that it should be self-interested (Marshall, Princ. of Econ., bk. i. ch. v.). "The range of economic measurement may gradually extend to much philanthropic action."

F. Y. E.

PLEDGE. A pledge or pawn may be defined as a bailment or delivery of personal property as security for a debt or other engagement. A pledge must be distinguished from a MORTGAGE. By a mortgage the legal property in the thing mortgaged passes to the mortgagee. But a pledge only gives a special property to the pledgee, the general property remaining in the pledgor. Hence the rights of the pledgee commence only with possession,

118

and a pledge consequently is not within the bills of sale acts. If the pledgor does not fulfil his engagement and redeem the pledge, the pledgee may sell it, but of course, he holds any surplus in trust for the pledgor.

A person who makes a business of receiving pledges is called a pawnbroker, and for the protection of the poor and ignorant, pledges under £10 are subject to special regulations.

[See arts. PAWN; PAWNBROKING:-the Pawnbrokers Act, 1872 (35 & 36 Vict. c. 93), and as to pledges generally, see Story on Bailments, tit. Pledge.]

PLOUGHGATE.

M. D. C.

An ancient Scots measure

ment of land = 8 oxgangs=96 Scots acres (122 acres English) = about 590,400 square yards imperial. This measurement is, however, not consistently employed in the same sense in old charters (see PLOUGH-TEAM).

[Cosmo Innes's Scotch Legal Antiquities, p. 241.]

A. D.

PLOUGH-TEAM. In Anglo-Saxon times and perhaps throughout the medieval centuries the usual plough-team in England consisted of eight oxen, but many instances of smaller teams, even to one ox, occur in Domesday and other records, and horses were not seldom mixed with the oxen. In some parts of England the latter had not been superseded by horses at the end of the 18th century (see ARTHUR YOUNG'S Tours). It is probable that 120 acres were usually reckoned to one full plough, and a ploughland was the unit of land measurement. The size of the unit

caru

Ox

might and did vary, according to local custom, to the character of the soil, or to the division of the manor into two or three fields. (see THREE-FIELD SYSTEM). The word " cate," and its subdivision "bovate" or "( gang," express land measures in terms of the plough-team. Dependent upon its use as a measure was the use of the plough-team as the basis upon which taxation was assessed, and much of the interpretation of Domesday depends upon the right understanding of the ploughland (see PLOUGH-GATE).

[Domesday Studies.-Domesday of St. Paul's, Introd. p. xv.-Nasse, Feldgemeinschaft, p. 32, 1869.-Seebohm, English Village Community.]

E. G. P.

PLUMART, MARQUIS DE. See DANGEU1.. PLUTOLOGY (Gr. λoûтos, wealth). This term was used by COURCELLE SENEUIL to describe that part of his treatise on political economy which dealt with what is described by some more modern writers as "pure theory"; that scientific study of the results of the action of

economic motives on men and societies to which the terms "economics" and "economic science" have been applied in the effort to escape the confusions which arose from embracing under the general title "political economy,' these more abstract investigations and the application of the knowledge thus gained, with

"both

that derived from other sources, to problems of practical statemanship. To this second part of the subject the eminent French economist applied the term Ergonomy. The Australian W. E. HEARN adopted the title for his work, Plutology, or the Theory of the Efforts to satisfy Human Wants.

[Cp. Traité Théorique et Pratique d'Économie Politique, par J. G. Courcelle Seneuil, Tome i. Partie Théorique ou Ploutologie, Paris, 1858. Plutology, by W. E. Hearn, London, 1864, and also the article on HEARN in vol. ii.]. A. W. F.

PLYMOUTH ADVENTURERS, THE, received a charter from James I. in 1606, to

plant all the territory on the American coast,

between 34° and 45°, and the islands within 100 miles. Letters-patent were issued to Sir George Somers, Richard Hakluyt, Edward Maria Wingfield, and others who should be joined with them. Two companies were ordered to be formed, one, the first or southern colony, the other, the second or northern colony. As the council of the southern colony was composed chiefly of residents in London, it became known as the London Company, and its jurisdiction extended from Cape Fear to the eastern end of The northern Long Island, from 34° to 41°. colony was called the Plymouth Company, because its council was appointed from Plymouth and the vicinity; its limits overlapped those of the other, extending from 38° to 45°, or from about the latitude of Delaware Bay to Halifax, Nova Scotia.

As regards administration, each colony was to be governed by a resident council of thirteen, to be appointed by the king; the laws enacted by them were subject to revision either by the king or the council in England. The people were granted no part whatever in the govern

ment.

Trial by jury was allowed only in cases of capital crimes, defined as "tumults, rebellion, conspiracy, meetings, and sedition, together with murder, manslaughter, incest and rape, and adultery." Lesser crimes were to be tried before the president and council, and punished according to their will. Real estate was to be held as under the laws of England (see LAND SYSTEM IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES); for the first five years all personal property and the fruits of the labours of the colonists were to be held as a common stock, and each member of the community was to be supported from the general store. The established religion was to be that of the Church of England. The people were enjoined by virtue of such penalties as the president and council might inflict, to "kindly treat the savage and heathen people in those parts, and use all proper means to draw them to the true service and knowledge of God," as well as to lead them "to good and sociable traffic." This was the first constitution of government established within the limits of the present United States.