At the head of this school stands William Roscher, professor of Political Economy at the University of Leipzig, whose excellent work, The Principles of Political Economy, in which he follows the historical method, we have just translated. William Roscher is (1857) scarcely forty years of age. He was born at Hanover, October 21, 1817. His laborious and simple life is that of a worthy representative of the science. “You ask me,” he wrote us recently, “to give you some information concerning the incidents of my life. I have, thank God, but very little to tell you. Lives whose history it is interesting to relate are seldom happy lives.” He confined himself to giving us a few dates which are, so to say, the landmarks of a career full of usefulness. Roscher, from 1835 to 1839, studied jurisprudence and philology at the universities of GÖttingen and Berlin. The learned teachers who exercised [pg 030] the greatest influence on his intellectual development were the historians Gervinus and Ranke, the philologist K. O. MÜller and the Germanist Albrecht. It is easy to see that he went to a good school, and that he profited by it. He was made doctor in 1838; admitted in 1840 as Privat-docent at GÖttingen; appointed in 1843 professor extraordinary at the same university, and called in 1844 to fill the chair of titular professor at Erlangen. Since 1848 he has acted in the same capacity in the University of Leipzig, where he was for six years member of the Poor Board, where he teaches also in the agricultural college. His fame has grown rapidly. Many of the German universities have emulated one another for the honor of possessing him, but he has not been willing to leave Leipzig. His first remarkable work was his doctor's thesis: De historicÆ doctrinÆ apud sophistas majores vestigiis, written in 1838. In 1842, he published his excellent work, which has since become classical: “The Life, Labors and age of Thucydides.”28 From that time, important works, all bearing the stamp of varied and profound scientific acquirements, and of an erudition remarkable for sagacity and elegance, have followed one another without interruption. In 1843, he treated the question of luxury29 with a master hand, and laid the foundation of his great work—only the first part of which has thus far appeared—at the same time tracing on a large scale the programme of a course of Political Economy according to the historical method.30 In 1844, he published his historical study on Socialism and Communism,31 and in 1845 and 1846, his ideas on the politics and the statistics of systems of agriculture. He is, besides, author of an excellent work on the [pg 031] corn-trade;32 of a remarkable book on the colonial system;33 of a sketch on the three forms of the state;34 of a memoir on the relations between Political Economy and classical antiquity;35 of a work of the greatest interest, on the history of economic doctrines in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—a work full of the most curious researches;36 of a book on the economic principle of forest economy,37 and lastly, of the great work, the first part of which we have translated, under the title of The Principles of Political Economy, and which is to be completed by the successive publication of three other volumes, on the Political Economy of Agriculture, and the related branches of primitive production, the Political Economy of Industry and Commerce, and one on the Political Economy of the State and the Commune. This work, when completed, will be a real cyclopedia of the science.38

Side by side with William Roscher, we must mention a [pg 032] young economist, Knies, formerly professor at the University of Marburg, but whom political persecution compelled to accept a secondary position at the gymnasium of Schaffhausen, for a time, and who fills, to-day, in the University of Freiburg, in Breisgau, a position more worthy of his great talent. We hope, in a work which we intend to publish, on Political Economy in Germany, to make the public acquainted with the works of this writer. They deserve to attract the most serious attention. We know of few works which equal his Political Economy, written on the historical method.39 We shall also have something to say of another economist, formerly professor at Marburg, a victim, also, of the power of the elector of Hesse, Hildebrand, now professor at the University of Zurich. His National-Œkonomie40 is a book replete with interest, and we have nowhere met with a better criticism of Proudhon's system, than in its pages. If the new school had produced but these three men, it would still have left its impress on the history of the science.

Other works, no less important, will claim our attention in the book to which we have already devoted many years of labor. If we carry out our intention, we shall review the works of a great many scholars, of great merit, whose names only are, unfortunately, known outside of Germany. The works of Rau, of Hermann, of Robert Mohl, of Hannsen, Helferich, SchÜtz, Kosegarten, Wirth etc., are a rich mine, from which we hope to draw much valuable information. Nor shall we neglect the original productions of J. Moser, the Franklin of Germany, nor the quaint, but sometimes striking, ideas of Adam MÜller. Lastly, our learned friend, Professor Stein of Vienna, will afford us an opportunity to show forth the merit of important and extensive works, animated by the philosophic spirit. For the present, we must confine ourselves to a view of the application of the historical method to Political Economy.