112 



advance in knowledge and social philosophy of 

 succeeding periods, been exhumed from the debris 

 of some ancient ruin, a century before tha 

 birth of Adam Smith, they would not have been 

 received as Gospels. I use the word progressive, 

 because it must not be forgotten that proposi- 

 tions in Economic, unlike those in Physical, 

 Science, will not admit of being solved within limits 

 bounded by the abstract principles of the Science 

 itself, and that if any attempt be made to apply 

 principles, without due regard to the circumstances 

 and conditions, social, political, educational &c., 

 of the nation concerned, it will end in the total 

 absence of any result whatever, or such a failure, as 

 will be more likely to bring discredit than anything 

 else, on those principles it is sought to vindicate and 

 uphold.* 



If then, it be admitted that the principles of 

 Political Economy, as understood and recognized 

 in Great Britain at the present time, would not 

 have been applicable in their full integrity to the 

 circumstances of Great Britain in the ' days of 

 ignorance/ it will, naturally I may say, follow, that 

 to look for happy results from conclusions, based 



* I am very much afraid that it is to a somewhat similar 

 cause, this Country is partly indebted for the destruction of the 

 Indigo trade in Bengal, and for the present very lamentable 

 condition of the Coolee Trade to Assam and Caehar See under 

 Labor infra, 



