Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. 161 



ceive how far he is above the point we have described, to which 

 indeed none even of the others can be said to approximate. To 

 consider the English labourer as possessed of mere necessaries, in 

 the severest sense of the word, would therefore be an obvious 

 and glaring falsity. Hence Mr. Ricardo found it convenient to 

 take, not the necessary, but the habitual subsistence of the la- 

 bourer as the permanent standard of wages (p. 91. 95). The 

 assumption however that the habits of the labourers cannot change 

 from period to period, so as to accommodate themselves to dif- 

 ferent amounts of real wages, appears to be quite unsupported by 

 reason, and in direct contradiction of all known history. The 

 habitual necessaries and comforts of the labourer may, and do, 

 undergo changes simultaneous and co-ordinate with those of the 

 population. Any attempt therefore to derive the fluctuations of 

 the latter, by supposing the former invariable, is utterly visionary 

 and unphilosophical. 



To obtain such principles as may truly indicate to us the 

 manner in which alterations of wages do really operate upon the 

 habits and numbers of the labourers, is an object of great in- 

 terest and importance, and one in which, though some progress 

 has been made, much is yet to be done. It seems little likely 

 that any one general law, free from all control of time, place 

 and circumstance, will be found of any real use or value. 



We may indeed notice, in order to avoid, the propensity of 

 the speculative powers of the human mind to rush forwards and 

 to endeavour to seize on such a general law. The professedly 

 hypothetical statement of a geometrical progression of population, 

 and an arithmetical progression of subsistence, made by Mr. Mal- 

 thus for the purpose of introducing his views, has been far more 

 frequently quoted, than many of the most valuable views of that 



Vol. IV. Part I. X 



