National System of Political Economy #247645

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.<br><br>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.