PREFACE.

Is offering this work to the public, the author is perfectly aware of the disadvantage under which he labours, when attempting to controvert doctrines supported by the authority of Malthus, Ricardo, M'Culloch, and Torrens, and which are deemed by one of the most distinguished writers of the day, to be "almost too plain for formal statement." He is fully aware that by a large portion of those who think upon Political Economy, a doubt of the truth of those doctrines is considered as evidence that they are not "even comprehended," and that, therefore, his book is likely to be thrown aside as unworthy of the time required for its perusal.

To all such, he would desire to call to mind the fact that in almost all departments of knowledge the orthodoxy of the present day is but the heresy of time past, and that many of those doctrines now held by themselves, and believed to be undeniably true, were, but a little time since, ridiculed as absurd. The disciples of Ptolemy had, as they believed, undoubted evidence of the truth of his system. They saw the sun revolve round the earth, and they found in the Scriptures confirmation of the correctness of his theory. Copernicus was denounced as a heretic, and his system was deemed too absurd for serious confutation, yet that of Ptolemy exists no longer, and it would now be as ridiculous to call in question that of Copernicus, as it was in former times to believe in its truth. Such having been the case in past times, it is possible that it may be so again, and that doctrines in Political Economy now so firmly established that to call them in question is deemed proof of want of ability

* "All this appears almost too plain for formal statement. It is, however, one of the most recent discoveries in Political Science: so recent, that it can scarcely be said to be universally admitted in this country, and that abroad it does not seem to be even comprehended."-Senior, Outline, p. 177.

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for their comprehension, may pass away and be as utterly forgotten as is now the Ptolemaic system.

It has been well said by an eminent writer of our time, that ' every one must of course think his own opinions right; for if he thought them wrong, they would no longer be his opinions: but' that there is a wide difference between regarding our'selves as infallible, and being firmly convinced of the truth of 'our creed. When,' he says, 'a man reflects on any particular 'doctrine, he may be impressed with a thorough conviction of the improbability, or even impossibility of its being false: and 'so he may feel in regard to all his other opinions when he 'makes them objects of separate contemplation. And yet, 'when he views them in the aggregate, when he reflects that 'not a single being on the earth holds collectively the same, 'when he looks at the past history and present state of man'kind, and observes the various creeds of different ages and 'nations, the peculiar modes of thinking of sects, and bodies, and individuals, the notions once firmly held which have been 'exploded, the prejudices once universally prevalent which 'have been removed, and the endless controversies which have 'distracted those who have made it the business of their lives 'to arrive at the truth; and when he further dwells on the con'sideration, that many of these his fellow creatures have had a 'conviction of the justness of their respective sentiments equal to his own, he cannot help the obvious inference, that in his 'own opinions it is next to impossible that there is not an ad'mixture of error; that there is an infinitely greater probability 'of his being wrong in some than right in all.'*

All that the author desires, is that his arguments may be fairly weighed, and to that end that the reader will strengthen 'himself, by something of an effort and a resolve, for the unpre'judiced admission of any conclusion which shall appear to be 'supported by careful observation and logical argument, even 'should it prove of a nature adverse to notions he may have 'previously formed for himself, or taken up, without examination, on the credit of others. Such an effort is, in fact,' says Sir John Herschel,' a commencement of that intellectual discipline

Essay on the Publication of Opinions, Section V.

INTRODUCTION.

THE field of inquiry of the political economist is, by most of the modern British writers, limited to the phenomena of the production and distribution of wealth. Mr. Senior defines political economy to be the "science which treats of the nature, production, and distribution of wealth."* Mr. M'Culloch says, " it might be defined to be the science of values."+ Archbishop Whateley, in order to mark more distinctly the limits within which it should be restricted, proposed to substitute for its present name that of "Catallactics, or the Science of Exchanges."I The most recent definition that we have seen, is contained in an able article of the London and Westminster Review,§ the writer of which is of opinion, that the science takes notice of those departments of affairs only "in which the acquisition of wealth is the main and acknowledged end," and that,

The political economist inquires what are the actions which 'would be produced by this desire, if, within the departments in question, it were unimpeded by any other. In this way,' he says, 'a nearer approximation is obtained than would other'wise be practicable to the real order of affairs in those depart'ments. This approximation has then to be corrected by making 'proper allowance for the effects of any impulses of a different description, which can be shown to interfere with the result in ' any particular case. Only in a few of the most striking cases '(such as the important one of the principle of population) are 'those corrections interpolated into the expositions of political economy itself; the strictness of purely scientific arrangement 'being thereby somewhat departed from for the sake of practical

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* Outline, p. 129.

+ Principles, p. 3.

Whateley's Lectures, p. 6.

§ October, 1836. On the Definition of Political Economy, and on the Method of Philosophical Investigation in that Science-an article that should be read by all students of political economy.

'utility. So far as it is known, or may be presumed, that the 'conduct of men in the pursuit of wealth is under the collateral 'influence of any other of the properties of our nature, than the 'desire of obtaining the greatest quantity of wealth with the least labour and self-denial, the conclusions of political economy 'will so far fail of being applicable to the explanation or pre'diction of real events, until they are modified by a correct allowance for the degree of influence exercised by the other

'cause.

Political economy may then,' he says, ' be defined as follows: and the definition seems to be complete.

The science which traces the laws of such of the phenomena of society as arise from the combined operations of mankind for the production of wealth, in so far as those phenomena are not modified by the pursuit of any other object.'

It is here supposed, that the principle of population is interpolated into the science on account of its "practical utility," but we are disposed to believe that it is introduced from absolute necessity. According to the commonly received theory, population tends to increase with great rapidity, and is only prevented from doing so by a constantly increasing difficulty in producing those commodities which constitute wealth. Wealth tends to increase rapidly, but the superior force of the procreative power is supposed to produce a necessity for the application of labour with a constantly decreasing return, affecting both the power of production and the mode of distribution. Here we have precisely the same opposition that exists between the centripetal and centrifugal forces. By a separate examination of the laws of both those forces, and a combination of the results, we obtain the law of the effect, which is compounded of the laws of all the causes which determine it. Herein consists the Science of Astronomy. By a separate examination of the laws of production and population, and a combination of the results thus obtained, we are enabled to obtain the law of the effect, and herein consists the Science of Political Economy. Neither of them alone constitutes a science, and the man who commences with a definition that limits him to the consideration of wealth, finds himself in the same condition with an astronomer who should undertake to give to the world a