The ideas of that age are now as antiquated and obsolete as those of the men before the flood. Then, the general public was supposed to be made for the benefit of each separate monopoly, and interest, and class. But now all this is changed. It was akin to the great Ricardian heresy, that cost of production regulates value. Every interest which had bestowed labour and expense in making productions, was allowed to hold the public in thraldom. The value of the law appeared to be measured by the quantity of labour bestowed in mastering its disgusting intricacies and technicalities. Obstinate pedants maintained it gravely as a valid argument for upholding all the old abuses of the law, that great and eminent men had bestowed so much labour and unhappy diligence in accumulating so much legal lore. What, said they, is the fruit of so much ingenuity to be thrown away? In fact, they determined upon loading the public with all sorts of oppression, for the sake of preserving a fictitious value to so much misdirected industry.

But all these ideas are now past and gone. They were congenial to times when education was narrowed to a small and select circle, and the general public was in a state of helpless and inert ignorance. But they have all been swept away before the advancing tide of public intelligence. It is now well settled that the community in general is not made for the benefit of agriculturists, or manufacturers, or lawyers, or bankers, or any set of men whatever, but they are for the benefit of the country. It is the wants of the community which must give rise to the value of their occupations; and all who engage in them must regard them as purely commercial speculations. The wants and requirements of all are not to be restricted or moulded by legislation to be subservient to the advantages of a few, but the interests of particular classes must be subordinate to the necessities of all.

CONCLUSION OF PURE ECONOMICS.

We now bring this part of the work, which we denominate PURE ECONOMICS, or the THEORY OF VALUE, to a conclusion. All the subjects discussed in it are capable of as strict mathematical demonstration as Mechanics. It will not be so in the succeeding

part, where the subjects discussed will be, to a great extent, matters of opinion. But men can no more alter the Laws of Value than they can alter the Laws of Mechanics. They are absolutely the same in all ages and among all men: and that is the reason why Economics has all the certainty, and all the exactness, though not the same numerical precision, as a Physical Science.

In the course of this work we have had to differ from many persons who are considered as authorities on the subject. But if we had not perceived what we felt to be great errors in their writings, there would have been no need of attempting it. But we have not gone beyond that freedom of discussion which is the very lifeblood of knowledge. The same evil which infected the progress of every other branch of Philosophy, injuriously affects Economics at the present day-running after authoritiesquoting authorities on one side or the other, without ever investigating or reflecting whether what these so-called authorities say is true; in many cases without sufficient knowledge of the subject to decide. In matters of taste authorities are much-in matters of science authorities are NOTHING. We acknowledge no authority. We are ready to pay every proper respect to Smith, Ricardo, Mill, or any one else. But just as Astronomy is greater than Hipparchus, than Ptolemy, than Copernicus, than Kepler, even greater than NEWTON himself; so Economics is greater than Quesnay, than Turgot, than Smith, than Ricardo, or than Mill. We refuse to be bound by what Smith, or any one, says, unless it is true. We have not been deterred from exercising the same free and boundless right of examining and discussing what preceding writers have said, whatever be their reputation, any more than succeeding philosophers have done with respect to Newton. They examine, discuss, and reject whatever is unsound in Newton with unlimited freedom. They only accept what they know and feel to be irresistibly true, according to an acknowledged standard of truth. They do not receive it because Newton says it, but because it is true. We do the same. We have endeavoured rigidly to adhere to the same method. They educe their general rules from the accurate examination and description of phenomena; we endeavour to educe general principles from the accurate observation and description of Economical phenomena: and we adopt precisely the same great general principles of reasoning

that they do. It is the Baconian method: the only method of discovering and erecting a solid edifice of science. There never was a greater error than that of the poet

""Tis not in things o'er thought to domineer."

On the contrary it is the very essence of science to idealise reality. All progress in science has been achieved by carefully fitting language to the facts of nature. The express purpose of this work is to sweep away authority and dogmatism, precisely as Galileo and modern physical philosophers have swept away the Aristotelian dogmatism on Mechanics and Astronomy. Except in those abstruse mysteries of nature which far transcend the limits of the capacity of the great majority of mankind to discover, or even to comprehend, there is no nobler field open at the present day for the extension of scientific research than Economics. But it must be done in the rigid method of the Baconian system: no other can lead to solid and durable success. The army of Bacon has gone forth conquering and to conquer, and must never pause in its victorious career, until universal science is brought under the dominion of the Monarch of Philosophy.

END OF PURE ECONOMICS.

A. P. BLUNDELL, Printer, 78, Church Street, London, S.E.