tween the fertility of the best and of the worst land in cultivation. The remainder of the produce he divided into profit and wages. He assumed that wages

naturally amount to neither more nor less than the amount of commodities which nature or habit has rendered necessary to maintain the labourer and his family in health and strength. He assumed that, in the progress of population and wealth, worse and worse soils are constantly resorted to, and that agricultural labour, therefore, becomes less and less proportionately productive; and he inferred that the share of the produce of land taken by the landlord and by the labourer must constantly increase, and the share taken by the capitalist constantly diminish.

true.

"This is a logical inference, and would consequently have been true in fact, if the assumed premises had been The fact is, however, that almost every one of them is false. It is not true that rent depends on the difference in fertility of the different portions of land in cultivation. It might exist if the whole territory of a country were of uniform quality. It is not true that the labourer always receives precisely the necessaries, or even what custom leads him to consider the necessaries of life. In civilised countries he almost always receives much more; in barbarous countries he from time to time obtains less. It is not true that as wealth and population advance, agricultural labour becomes less and less proportionately productive. . . . . Mr. Ricardo was certainly justified in assuming his premises, provided

that he was always aware, and always kept in mind, that they were merely assumed. This, however, he seems sometimes not to know, and sometimes he forgets. Thus he states, as an actual fact, that in an improving country the difficulty of obtaining raw produce constantly increases. He states as a real fact, that a tax on wages falls not on the labourer but on the capitalist..

"A third objection to reasoning on hypothesis is its liability to error, either from illogical inference, or from the omission of some element necessarily incident to the supposed case. When a writer takes his premises from observation and consciousness, and infers from them what he supposes to be real facts, if he have committed any grave error, it generally leads him to some startling conclusion. He is thus warned of the probable existence of an unfounded premise, or of an illogical inference, and if he be wise, tries back until he has detected his mistake. But the strangeness of the results of an hypothesis gives no warning. We expect them to differ from what we observe, and lose, therefore, this incidental means of testing the correctness of our reasoning.'

With regard to the criticisms on Ricardo, I may perhaps have an opportunity of adverting to them on some future occasion. I shall merely at present say that they appear to me to be unjust. But what I am more immediately concerned in remarking is that the

* Introductory Lecture on Political Economy, 1852, p. 63.

objections of Mr. Senior to the hypothetical treatment of Political Economy, so far as they possess weight, do not apply to this mode of treatment as I have just described it. According to that description, Political Economy has been represented as deriving its premises from existing facts; it was to the inferences drawn from those premises only that the term "hypothetical” was applied; but, as these inferences constituted the whole of what is properly called Political Economy, I conceived that Political Economy was properly designated as a hypothetical science. But it is to the character not of the conclusions but of the premises that Mr. Senior's objections apply. "A writer," he says, "who starts from arbitrarily assumed premises is in danger of forgetting their unsubstantial foundation." "No one listens to an exposition of what might be the state of things under given but unreal conditions, with the interest with which he hears a statement of what is actually taking place." "The strangeness of the results of an hypothesis gives no warning." It is evident that these are no objections to a system of doctrines which is founded, not on an hypothesis, but on facts.

Mr. Senior's language indeed would seem to imply that, if the premises have a foundation in existing facts, the conclusions logically deduced from them must represent actual phenomena. Speaking of Ricardo's reasoning, he says, "This was a logical inference, and would consequently have been true in fact, if the assumed premises had been true." But it is surely

possible that the premises should be true, and yet incomplete-true so far as the facts which they assert go, and yet not including all the conditions which affect the actual course of events. The laws of motion and of gravity are not arbitrary assumptions, but have a real foundation in nature; and it is a strictly logical deduction from those laws that the path of a projectile is in the course of a parabola; yet, in point of fact, no projectile accurately describes this course; the friction of the air, which was not included in the premises, coming in to disturb the operation of the other principles. In the same way (as I have already shown by several illustrations, and as will appear more fully hereafter) the doctrines of Political Economy, though based upon indubitable facts of human nature and of the external world, do not necessarily represent, and scarcely ever precisely represent, existing occurrences. Indeed, Mr. Senior in another passage fully admits this. "We shall not," he says, "it is true, from the fact that by acting in a particular manner a labourer may obtain higher wages, a capitalist larger profits, or a landlord higher rent, be able to infer the further fact, that they will certainly act in this manner; but we shall be able to infer that they will do so in the absence of disturbing causes." This concedes the only point for which I contend—the point, namely, that the conclusions of Political Economy do not necessarily represent actual events. The facts thus being agreed upon, the question is reduced to the verbal one, viz: whether a science, the doctrines of which correspond

with external realities only "in the absence of disturbing causes," is properly described as a positive or hypothetical science. It appears to me that a proposition cannot correctly be said to represent "positive truth" which corresponds with facts only when no disturbing causes intervene-this condition, moreover, being one which is scarcely ever realized. Nor do I think the description would be less objectionable, even though, as Mr. Senior afterwards remarks, it were "frequently" possible "to state the cases in which these causes may be expected to exist, and the force with which they are likely to operate." On the other hand, as I have already admitted, if the term be used, not with reference to what are properly the doctrines of Political Economy, but to the grounds on which these doctrines are built, Political Economy is as well entitled to be considered a "positive science" as any of those physical sciences to which this name is commonly applied.

This point, however, as I have said, is a purely verbal one, and as such is of little importance, provided the real character of the principles in question be borne in mind. This character, as I have endeavoured to establish, is identical with that of the physical principles which are deduced from the laws of gravitation and motion; like these, the doctrines of Political Economy are to be understood as asserting not what will take place, but what would or what tends to take place, and in this sense only are they true.