Politics & Power Quote by Nassau William Senior

Senior is doing something economists still do when they know the room is already skeptical: he opens with a preemptive defense and a liability waiver. Political Economy in the early 19th century wanted the prestige of physics but kept colliding with messy politics, moral panic, and the fact that its “laws” were about people who vote, riot, and starve. Calling its progress “slow” is both an admission and a strategic repositioning. He’s asking the reader to blame the subject’s immaturity not on incompetence, but on the field’s hostile terrain and methodological growing pains.

The phrase “our object” signals a collective posture, the voice of a discipline trying to manufacture authority through institutional “we.” He’s not just introducing a book; he’s staging Political Economy as a project under construction, one that needs improved tools and better norms. “Suggest means” hints at a methodological agenda: clearer definitions, tighter reasoning, maybe a push toward abstraction and away from partisan pamphleteering. It’s an attempt to wrest the field from moral philosophy and parliamentary rhetoric into something that can claim neutrality.

Then comes the real tell: “warn the reader of the nature of the following Treatise.” That word “warn” is doing heavy work. Senior expects resistance, maybe outrage, because the analysis will likely strip cherished beliefs of their sentimental cover. He’s preparing you for conclusions that feel cold: wages, poverty, and policy framed as constraints rather than crusades. The subtext is almost modern: don’t mistake discomfort for error.