Introduction, Chapter 1, Footnote #01
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The following extract from the Edinburgh Review, Vol. 114, seems to me to represent accurately the view of the subject which was current about the time (1861) that it was written: and it is all the better evidence of the general state of opinion, because it occurs incidentally in an article on `English Jurisprudence'.
That some departments of human conduct are capable of being classified with sufficient exactness to supply the materials of a true science is conclusively proved by the existence of Political Economy. … Political Economy is the only moral science in which definitions of fundamental terms sufficiently accurate to obtain general currency amongst all persons conversant with the subject have yet been produced. The consequence has been that the conclusions of those who understand the science are accepted and acted with a degree of confidence which is felt in regard to no other speculations that deal with human affairs. Political Economists can appeal to the only test which really measures the truth of a science---success---with as much confidence as astronomers. The source of their success has been that they have in affixing a precise meaning to words which had for ages been used by millions who attached to them vivid but not definite notions, such as of wages, profits, capital, value, rent, and many others of the same kind.
The preface to Fawcett's Manual---first published in 1863---exhibits the same undoubting confidence in the established scientific character of Political Economy. It begins with the following sentences:
I have often remarked that Political Economy is more frequently talked about than any other science, and that its principles are more frequently appealed to in the discussions of ordinary life. No science, however, is perhaps more imperfectly understood. I believe that profound mathematicians, or accomplished geologists and botanists, are far more numerous than real masters of the principles of Political Economy.