DOCTOR OF CIVIL LAW; LATE PROFESSOR OF LAW AT NEUFCHATEL; MEMBER INCLUDING THE NOTES OF THE FRENCH TRANSLATION, BY HENRI RICHELOT Chef du Bureau de la Législation des Douanes Etrangères au Ministère du Commerce de France; Auteur WITH A Preliminary Essay and Notes, BY STEPHEN COLWELL. PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. (BY THE TRANSLATOR.) FREDERICK LIST* was born, the 6th August, 1789, at Reutlingen, a free city of Suabia. His early education was incomplete. At the Classical School he exhibited so little taste for its studies, that his father withdrew him; but as he showed equal indisposition to learn his father's business, he was subsequently left to shape his own education. This he did, however, to such purpose, that we find him, in 1816, holding an appointment in the Central Administration of Wurtemberg, in which he justified the confidence placed in him by a distinguished statesman, the Minister Wangenheim, who offered his young assistant, in the following year, the chair of Political Economy, in the University of Tübingen. List accepted this position. He tells us in the Preface to his National System, that the principle of free trade was one of the first encountered in his new career. "It seemed to me at first reasonable; but gradually I satisfied myself that the whole doctrine was applicable and sound only when adopted by all nations. Thus I was led to the idea of nationality; I found that the theorists kept always in view mankind and man, never separate nations. It became then obvious to me, that between two advanced countries, a free competition must necessarily be advantageous to both, if they were upon the same level of industrial progress; and that a nation, * The sources of this biography are 1st. List's life, by Professor Häusser, of Heidelberg, who was commissioned by our Author's family with the collection and publication of List's works, and who has fulfilled his task with zeal and talent. 2d. List's biography, written by his French translator, Henry Richelot. 3d. The article in the Dictionnaire de l'Economie Politique, (Paris, 1853). 4th. The National System itself. 5th. We have made free use of the Author's Preface, which is therefore omitted in the translation. I cannot omit here to express my obligations, in all that concerns this publication, to Stephen Colwell, who has so kindly consented to be its Editor, and to point out some of my errors in a language with which I am yet far from being unhappily far behind as to industry, commerce and navigation, and which possessed all the material and moral resources for its development, must above every thing put forth all its strength to sustain a struggle with nations already in advance." In his chair, as well as in the periodicals, he advocated political reforms designed to promote the welfare of his country; but in his earnest advocacy, he failed to preserve a desirable caution and prudence; hence, he was soon exposed to persecutions, the result of which rendered him restless and unhappy. This condition accompanied him almost all his life; he had in many respects outstripped his age, and conscious of his genius, he could not easily bear to be trammelled in the range of his ideas. The reader of his book must be struck with his rapidity of thought, and the sagacity of his views. Whilst in Tübingen, he conceived the idea of establishing an association of merchants and manufacturers, the aim of which was to obtain the suppression of customs on the interior boundaries of the German States; then, by the aid of a common system of customs on the exterior frontiers of Germany, to attain the same industrial and commercial development which other nations had succeeded in obtaining by their commercial policy. A change in the ministry, by which his friends ceased to be in power, induced him to tender his resignation as a professor. He withdrew to private life, and devoted his leisure to various literary works, especially to an annotated translation of J. B. Say's Political Economy. Important events induced him to hasten from these labors to Paris. There, in 1823, he became acquainted with Lafayette, who offered to take him to America and to befriend him. The love of List for his country prevented him at that time from accepting a proposition so flattering; but when he found that he could no longer be of any service to it, he determined, in 1825, to join Lafayette in America. List found the General in Philadelphia, and received from him a most kind recepfamiliar. Mr. Colwell first turned my attention to the works of Frederick List, and recommended to me the translation of the "National System of Political Economy," as a work which had been received with immense favor in Germany, and which, for its real merit and adaptation to our country, deserved like success here. My frequent conferences with Mr. Colwell first gave me a taste for Economical studies, which free access to his library, the largest on the subject of Political Economy I have seen in Europe or America, enabled me to gratify, to the full extent of all my leisure hours. This library contains many thousand volumes in the various departments of Social Economy, including works in the French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Latin languages. |