Quiz: New Principles of Political Economy

All 35 questions. A perfect score earns the gold medal; 80% earns silver.

1. 1. Which economist is not among those Sismondi names as differing from him on proportion?

   J. R. McCulloch Adam Smith David Ricardo Jean-Baptiste Say
2. 2. Where had Sismondi himself witnessed the sufferings of factory workers?

   Italy, Switzerland and France Scotland, Ireland and Lancashire England, Germany and Belgium only Spain and Portugal
3. 3. Whose words does Sismondi borrow to express confidence that facts would prove him right?

   Archimedes’s Socrates’s Galileo’s Copernicus’s
4. 4. Why, according to Sismondi, did the Romans call the propertyless “proletarians”?

   As though they above all were called to have children Because they served in the legions without pay Because they were freed slaves Because they worked the public lands of the Republic
5. 5. To what does Sismondi compare the parish’s supplement to the wages of the great farmers’ labourers?

   Making the parish provide the oats for their horses Making the parish pay the landlord’s rent for them Building their barns Making the parish feed their hunting hounds
6. 6. What chance does Sismondi want the industrious worker to have?

   Of emigrating to America at public expense Of electing his employer Of receiving a state pension at fifty Of becoming his master’s partner
7. 7. What does Sismondi say happens to the younger sons and daughters of the great English landed families?

   They are sacrificed to the eldest and often grow old unmarried They inherit equal shares of the family estates under the common law They emigrate to manage colonial plantations They enter Parliament in their brother’s place and live on its salary
8. 8. What measure does Sismondi suggest in response to labour-saving inventions?

   Paying public rewards to inventors Taxing steam engines and frames Abolishing inventors’ patents Banning new machines by law
9. 9. According to Sismondi, what bounds consumption?

   Production The quantity of subsistence the earth can produce Revenue The supply of money
10. 10. What, for Sismondi, is the increase of wealth?

    The means for procuring the happiness of all A question outside the science of government A sign of moral decline The end and sole object of political economy
11. 11. How much cheaper, according to Sismondi, are frame-made stockings than hand-knitted ones?

    About one half Not cheaper at all, only finer One hundred times cheaper Barely ten per cent
12. 12. What hypothetical does Sismondi pose about England and steam engines?

    Whether Geneva would grow richer by adopting England’s poor law and its system of parish relief Whether an England worked wholly by machines, with Geneva’s population, would be richer Whether England, with all its steam engines, could feed its people without importing foreign corn Whether England would gain by exporting its steam engines to Geneva and the other Swiss cantons
13. 13. How does Sismondi describe the public funds?

    As a burden on the landed aristocracy only As the safest and most productive form of national capital As the most useful of all public expenditures in time of peace As an imaginary capital, an assignment on future revenue
14. 14. Which example does Sismondi use against Ricardo’s claim that capital grows whether production rises or consumption falls?

    The cotton mills of Manchester The silk weavers of Geneva The hatmakers of Lyons The watchmakers of Neuchâtel
15. 15. Which branch of the science of government seeks man’s moral happiness?

    Political economy Civil jurisprudence High politics Finance
16. 16. What, according to Sismondi, sustained the boom in English manufactures before 1825?

    Wartime orders from the Holy Alliance, which clothed and armed its armies in English goods Loans by English lenders to the new American republics, spent on English goods A rise in English wages, which enlarged the home market for cotton and woollen goods The repeal of the Corn Laws, which let foreign nations pay for English goods in grain
17. 17. What does Sismondi say the division of labour has done to children?

    Excluded them from manufactures entirely, since the work now demands adult strength Given them a valuable apprenticeship in a trade they can follow all their lives Condemned them to simple repetitive tasks before their faculties developed Raised their wages above those of adults, since their nimble fingers suit the machines
18. 18. What advantage does the village shoemaker have over the journeymen of a shoe manufactory?

    He knows his customers and can judge whether there is room for his sons He uses better tools and machinery, bought with the savings of his own trade He earns a higher wage, since he sells directly to customers without a master He is exempt from the poor rate, which falls only on the great manufactories
19. 19. What does Sismondi say is better than paying 8 sous in wages and 12 in alms?

    Letting the state pay all 20 sous from taxes Abolishing all alms and parish relief altogether Paying 8 sous and nothing more Paying the full 20 sous directly as wages
20. 20. What does Sismondi say printing would have done had it reached Europe in the tenth century?

    Had no effect at all Enriched the monasteries that owned the presses Spread literacy across Europe within a century Destroyed the copyists and deepened barbarism
21. 21. What does the solitary man do once he has more than he can use?

    He saves the surplus as capital He stops working He trades it with neighbours He works harder to build a reserve
22. 22. What name for the science of riches does Sismondi admire in Aristotle?

    Chrematistics Catallactics Plutonomy Oeconomics
23. 23. Why does Sismondi think free competition does not secure the interest of all?

    Governments always know better than individuals what serves their interest Competition is impossible without guilds and their rules Workers do not understand their own interest and need guidance Public force sides with the stronger
24. 24. What does Sismondi call a nation in which no one suffers but no one has leisure to think deeply?

    Half civilised Enslaved to a few Barbarous and idle Perfectly happy and free
25. 25. In Sismondi’s account of Plato’s Republic, what does the growth of society finally require?

    A common treasury for the whole city A population of guardians maintained by the rest The abolition of slavery among the Greeks A class of merchants and sailors trading abroad
26. 26. From what earlier work did the New Principles develop?

    A review of Ricardo’s Principles A course of lectures given at the Academy of Geneva in 1817 A report on manufactures to the French Chamber of Deputies An article on political economy for the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia
27. 27. Why, according to Sismondi, does one very rich family encourage national industry less than a hundred comfortable ones with the same total revenue?

    It buys foreign, not national, goods It keeps no servants and employs no artisans It saves all its revenue instead of spending it It pays higher taxes, which go to the state rather than to industry
28. 28. Which country illustrates a population that is a calamity because it exceeds its means of subsistence?

    India England China Holland
29. 29. Where did Sismondi prepare the second edition?

    In Geneva In Tuscany In England In Paris
30. 30. Which manufacture does Sismondi think suits an opulent town like Geneva?

    Cotton spinning Watches and jewellery Lace, linen and silk ribbons Coarse woollens and blankets
31. 31. How did Sismondi write the encyclopaedia article that led him to new results?

    Without consulting books, reasoning afresh from principles By summarising the latest French and English treatises By collecting statistics from government reports In close collaboration with J.-B. Say in Paris
32. 32. Which country does Sismondi cite as having a brilliant literature while four-fifths of its people could not read?

    France before the Revolution Ancient Athens under Pericles England in his own day Renaissance Italy under the Medici
33. 33. Whose travels does Sismondi cite as evidence of glutted markets in the United States?

    Mr de Tocqueville’s Mr Cobbett’s Mr Fearon’s Mr Birkbeck’s
34. 34. What is the revenue of the poor, according to Sismondi?

    The rent of small plots Their power of working Interest on savings Parish relief
35. 35. Whom does Sismondi name as the best-known writer of the “cooperative system”?

    William Godwin Saint-Simon Charles Fourier Robert Owen