500 FALLACIES. 



is some admitted truth, some common maxim, the reasons or evidence 

 for which have been forgotten, or are not thought of at the time, but 

 if they had been thought of would have shown the necessity of so 

 limiting the premiss, that it would no longer have supported the con- 

 clusion drawn fiom it. 



Of this nature is the fallacy in what is called, by Adam Smith and 

 others, the Mercantile Theory in Political Economy. That theory sets 

 out from the common maxim, that whatever brings in money enriches; 

 or that every one is rich in proportion to the quantity of money he 

 obtains. From this it is concluded that the value of any branch of 

 trade, or of the trade of the country altogether, consists in the balance 

 of money it brings in ; that any trade which carries more money out 

 of the country than it draws ftito it is a losing trade ; that therefore 

 money should be attracted into the country, and kept there, by pro- 

 hibitions and bounties ; and a train of similar corollaries. All for want 

 of reflecting that if the riches of an individual are in proportion to the 

 quantity of money he can command, it is because that is the measure 

 of his power of purchasing money's worth; and is therefore subject 

 to the proviso that he is not debarred from employing his money in 

 such purchases. The premiss, therefore, is only true secundum quid ; 

 but the theory assumes it to be true absolutely, and infers that increase 

 of money is increase of riches, even when produced by means subver- 

 sive of the condition under which alone money is riches. 



A second instance is, the argument by which it used to be contended, 

 before the commutation of tithe, that titlies fell upon the landlord, and 

 were a deduction from rent ; because the rent of tithe-free land was 

 always higher than that of land of the same quality and the same ad- 

 vantages of situation, subject to tithe. Whether it be true that a tithe 

 falls on rent or no, a treatise on Logic is not the place to examine : 

 but it is certain that this is no proof of it. Whether the proposition 

 be true or false, tithe-free land imist, by the necessity of the case, pay 

 a higher rent. For if tithes do not fall on rent, it must be because 

 they fall on the consumer ; because they raise the price of com. But 

 if corn be raised in price, the farmer of tithe-free as well as tlie farmer 

 of tithed land gets the benefit. To the latter the rise is but a com- 

 ^ pensation for the tithe he pays ; to the first, who pays none, it is clear 

 gain, and therefore enables him, and if there be freedom of competi- 

 tion forces him, to pay so much the moi'e rent to his landlord. This 

 is the refutation of the fallacy. The question remains, to what class 

 of fallacies it belongs. The premiss is, that the oWTier of tithed land 

 receives less rent than the ovraer of tithe-free land ; the conclusion is, 

 that therefore he receives less than he himself would receive if tithe 

 were abolished. But the premiss is only true conditionally ; the o-\vner 

 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 circumstances in which that condition fails, and 

 in which, by consequence, the premiss would not be true. The fallacy, 

 therefore, is a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simj>liciter. 



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

 terferences of government in the economical affairs of society, grounded 

 upon a misapplication of the maxim, that an individual is a better 

 judge than the government of what is for his own pecuniary interest. 

 This objection was urged to Mr. Wakefield's system of colonization, 



