FALLACIES OF RATIOCINATION. 501 



one of the greatest practical improvements in public affairs which have 

 been made in our time. Mr. Wakt^field'vS principle, as most ]ie(tplc 

 are now aware, is the artificial concentration of the settlers, by fixing 

 such a price upon unoccupied land as may preserve the most desirable 

 proportion between the <juanlity of land in culture, and the laboring 

 population. Against this it was argued, tliat 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 pro- 

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

 in this argument it was forgotten that the fact of a man's taking a largo 

 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 

 himself 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 consequent possibility of procuring labor for hire, 

 but would have placed himself, without equivalent, in a situation of 

 voluntary inferiority. Tlie proposition, therefore, that the quantity of 

 land which people will take when left to themselves is that which it 

 is most for their interest to take, is true only secundum quid: it is only 

 their interest while they have no guarantee for the conduct of ono 

 another. But the argument disregards the limitation, and takes tho 

 proposition for true simpliciter. 



One of the conditions oftenest dropped, when what would otherwise 

 be a true proposition is employed as a premiss for proving others, is 

 the condition of time. It is a principle of political economy that prices, 

 profits, wages, &c. " always find their level ;" but this is often inter- 

 preted as if it meant that they are always, or generally, at their level ; 

 while the truth is, as Coleridge epigrammatically expresses it, that 

 they are always ^wfZ/w^ their level, " which might be taken as a para- 

 phrase or ironical definition of a storm." 



Under the same head of fallacy (a dicto secundum quid ad dictum, 

 simpliciter) might be placed all the errors which are vulgarly called 

 misapplications of abstract truths : that is, where a principle, true (as 

 the common expression is) iti the abstract, that is, all modifying causes 

 being supposed absent, is reasoned upon as if it were true absolutely, 

 and no modifying circumstances could ever by possibility exist. This 

 very common form of error it is not recjuisite that we should exemplify 

 here, as it will be particularly treated of hereafter in its application to 

 the subjects on which it is most frequent and most fatal, those of poli- 

 tics and society. 



