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applying his conclusions. The last of the three is Mr. Blake, well known as the author of the first clear account of the working of the foreign exchanges, but who deserves still better to be known for his pamphlet on the effects of the Government expenditure during the late war, a work of such masterly clearness and force, at least in respect to that particular point, that I cannot explain how it should have failed, as it did, to produce general conviction, except from the resistance offered to it by that inveterate prejudice which looks to the amount of the currency as a cause operating upon prices. Mr. Blake's service to the science of money was his exhibition of the manner in which capital, being converted into income, as it was in the most rapid manner, by the Government expenditure, became a new source of demand, and operated instantly upon prices and the whole of the national industry. This, I think, is a foundation stone which no logic will be able to disturb, and the conclusions of these various writers are materials which must enter into the structure of a true theory of money.

In taking my stand with Sismondi, Malthus, and Chalmers, and, I ought to add, a high living authority, Mr. Gibbon Wakefield, as to the tendency of capital to accumulate in excess, and with Blake as to the preeminent importance of every extension of demand, or what is commonly called the "market," upon prices and industry, I find myself opposed to the greatest name in English political science, with perhaps the single exception of Burke, and to that of one whose

range of thought on all the kindred sciences, wider and more powerful than Burke's, must give his writings an influence upon future generations which no living man can estimate. Every reader will anticipate the name of Mr. John Stuart Mill. It is the opposition, I may say, of the pupil to the master, for during about eighteen years the writings of Mr. Mill have constituted my chief political discipline. That with such aid it should be possible for inferior powers to see a little further in a particular direction, cannot be thought extraordinary. It is the privilege of minds of the highest order to raise the whole level upon which succeeding inquirers carry on their operations.

If, however, the principles maintained in the following pages be found correct, it will still appear strange that, involving as they do a radically different conception of the working of the social machine from that presented by the old political economy and sanctioned by Mr. Mill, they should yet be only slight developments of thoughts to be found in Mr. Mill's own writings. The error of Say, and those who followed him, arose from arguing upon assumptions applicable to a state of barter, and overlooking the effects produced by the introduction of a currency. Now that effect of a currency which includes all others, namely, the separation of the power of purchase from the sale, which goes along with it in a state of barter, was explained (I believe then for the first time) and worked out into some of its most important consequences by Mr. Mill, in the essay on the "Influ

ence of Consumption upon Production," which was written by him more than twenty years ago'. In the same essay the effect of demand in calling capital into activity is distinctly recognised, and practical conclusions in perfect harmony with these two great principles are to be found in several parts of his more recent work. But in contact, as it were, with this large body of profound and original thought, is a considerable portion of deductive reasoning taken from the old political economy, and of such a nature that no effort of my mind is able to work a reconciliation between the two.

Whatever may be the ultimate decision of competent judges with respect to the amount of error to be found in those arguments of previous writers which Mr. Mill has retained, there can be little difference of opinion as to the value of that more important portion of Mr. Mill's great work, which is wholly his own, and which has already done so much to change the whole spirit of economical reasonings. It has indeed effected, scientifically and conclusively, that subordination of the doctrine of wealth to the doctrine of human welfare, which was the object so

This essay, however, was not published until the year 1844, in the volume called "Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy." The last essay in that volume had been published previously, and is referred to at page 129 in the present work as if it had appeared in 1830. This is a mistake of which I did not become aware until it was too late to correct it in the proper place. The important paper in question first appeared in 1836, and therefore "sixteen years" should be spoken of as the time during which it has been before the public without producing its proper effect.

earnestly desired by Sismondi and Chalmers, and which they, if they had lived to see it, would have been the foremost to recognise and welcome.

The results here presented to the reader have been very slowly arrived at; but the composition is hasty, having been effected during the only period of strength sufficient for such a purpose that has occurred in the course of several years of depressing ill-health. From this cause many references which would have been desirable are omitted, and others made from memory may be inaccurate; but I trust there is no inaccuracy which materially affects the reasoning.

The Second Part of the following work contains a series of practical suggestions, some directly growing out of the principles established in the First Part, others having an indirect but still close connection with that view of our industrial condition which the First Part exhibits. In this and in the Third Part, which is little more than an introduction to that which was at first intended to be the substance of the work, but which it has been found impossible to execute at present, there are various criticisms on public questions, religious as well as political, and on public men, the tone of which may appear presumptuous. I shall be sorry if they produce this impression, which I think would be an unjust one, but cannot help it. The whole has been written with the conviction that nothing is more wanted at the present time than downright statements of what men actually think; and whoever resolves to write or speak thus is very likely to

assume an air of dogmatism, more or less at variance with the received ideas of good taste. A reader, however, who is satisfied that this proceeds only from frankness, and that it may be accompanied with full consciousness of liability to error, will not think the offence too serious to be forgiven.

As this last revise sheet goes to the printer, the announcement is made of the deplorable result of the Liverpool election. Just two years after the death of Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Cardwell, a statesman of the highest qualifications, representing his policy, is deprived of his seat for the second commercial city in the empire, only because he is too honest to defer to a popular prejudice. About the same time, and for the same reason, Mr. Roundell Palmer retires from Plymouth. I have never had any connection with the party to which those gentlemen belong, and know nothing of them except what the public knows from their speeches and their acts; but it certainly does appear to me, that England might be searched without finding two men better qualified to sit in the House of Commons, and that that state of public opinion which excludes them at a time like the present, is a far more serious matter than any question as to the individuals who should fill the Government offices.

If it were possible to believe that the opposition to Mr. Gladstone in the University of Oxford could succeed, it would throw a still darker gloom over the

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