ON THE PURCHASING POWER OF WAGES. 823 



discerned that the policy was not one of progress, but of 

 stagnation, perhaps retrogression. 



The writer who was supposed to fill up what was wanting 

 in Adam Smith, and to define accurately what were the 

 principles on which an economic society was inevitably and 

 unalterably regulated, was Ricardo, an acute and prosperous 

 gambler on the Stock Exchange. Himself a conspicuous and 

 successful example of the men who get wealth but do not 

 make wealth, he delivered himself 1 of some kindly and cheap 

 sympathy for labour, but utterly ignored the facts which had 

 brought about the shameful condition to which labour in his 

 time was reduced. His book was a great success. It seemed 

 to denote that artificial rents, induced by fraud and force, were 

 the outcome of a wise Providence, in which the gains of the 

 accidental few were a divine dispensation, and the miseries 

 of the oppressed many should be a solemn caution to nations 

 not to approach too near the margin of unproductive cultiva- 

 tion. The same benevolent Providence, as interpreted by 

 this author, was the creator and protector of the gains of 

 capital, though while he wrote all the positive forces of law and 

 justice were enlisted on the side of the employer, and any 

 attempt on the part of the labourer to sell his necessary 

 stock at the best possible price was punished with the 

 hulks and transportation. Surely before people write about 

 society, they should study a little of how society has been 

 formed, how it has been warped, and how not once but many 

 times they who have been entrusted with the functions of 

 government have brought headlong ruin on the nation whose 

 affairs they have administered, and on their worthless selves at 

 last. When Ricardo put his opinions on paper Sir Frederic Eden 

 had written his history of the poor. But Ricardo does not 

 seem to have noticed that work, or even to have troubled 

 himself with the mass of mischievous legislation by which 

 the few were enriched and the many impoverished, viz. the 

 economical laws on the Statute-book. 



.ciplc* of Political Economy and Taxation, p. 54. 



