562 FALLACIES. 



this belongs. The premise is, that the owner of tithed land receives less 

 rent than the owner of tithe-free land ; the conclusion is, that therefore he 

 receives less than he himself would receive if tithe were abolished. But 

 the premise is only true conditionally ; the owner of tithed land receives 

 less than what the owner of tithe-free land is enabled to receive when other 

 lands are tithed; while the conclusion is applied to a state of circum- 

 stances in which that condition fails, and in which, by consequence, the 

 premise will not be true. The fallacy, therefore, is d dicto secundum quid 

 ad dictum simpliciter. 



A third example is the opposition sometimes made to legitimate inter- 

 ferences of government in the economical affairs of society, grounded on a 

 misapplication of the maxim, that an individual is a better judge than the 

 government of M'hat is for his own pecuniary interest. This objection 

 was urged to Mr. Wakefield's principle of colonization ; the concentration 

 of the settlers, by fixing such a price on unoccupied land as may presei've 

 the most desirable proportion between the quantity of land in culture and 

 the laboring population. Against this it was argued, that if individuals 

 found it for their advantage to occupy extensive tracts of land, they, being 

 better judges of their own interest than the legislature (which can only 

 proceed on general rules), ought not to be restrained from doing so. But 

 in this argument it was forgotten that the fact of a person's taking a lai'ge 

 tract of land is evidence only that it is his interest to take as much as 

 other people, but not that it might not be for his interest to content him- 

 self with less, if he could be assured that other people would do so too ; 

 an assurance which nothing but a government regulation can give. If all 

 other people took much, and he only a little, he would reap none of the 

 advantages derived from the concentration of the population and the con- 

 sequent possibility of procuring labor for hire, but would have placed him- 

 self, without equivalent, in a situation of voluntary inferiority. The prop- 

 osition, therefore, that the quantity of land which people will take when 

 left to themselves is that which is most for their interest to take, is true 

 only secundum quid: it is only their intei'est while they have no guar- 

 antee for the conduct of one another. But the arrangement disregards 

 the limitation, and takes the proposition for true sim^^liciter. 



One of the conditions oftenest dropped, when Avhat would otherwise be 

 a true proposition is employed as a premise for proving others, is the con- 

 dition of time. It is a principle of political economy that prices, profits, 

 wages, etc., " always find their level ;" but this is often interpreted as if it 

 meant that they are always, or generally, a^ their level, while the truth 

 is, as Coleridge epigrammatically expresses it, that they are always Jinding 

 their level, " which might be taken as a paraphrase or ironical definition of 

 a storm." 



Under the same head of fallacy {d dicto secundum quid ad dictum sim- 

 pliciter) might be placed all the errors which are vulgarly called misappli- 

 cations of abstract truths ; that is, where a principle, true (as the common 

 expression is) in the abstract, that is, all modifying causes being supposed 

 absent, is reasoned on as if it were true absolutely, and no modifying cir- 

 cumstance could ever by possibility exist. This very common form of 

 error it is not requisite that we should exemplify here, as it will be partic- 

 ularly treated of hereafter in its application to the subjects on which it is 

 most frequent and most fatal, those of politics and society.* 



* "An advocate," says Mr. De Morgan (Formal Logic, p. 270), "is sometimes guilty of 

 the argument a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter : it is his business to do for his 



