to go to
colonies in which _rich_ lands were to be had cheap, than to stay at
home where landlords charged high rents for the _poor_ ones that were
necessarily cultivated: and therefore that imported food would be
cheaper than that which was grown at home. The result has proved that he
was wrong. Food is now obtained with more difficulty than before;
emigration is necessary, and the late decision in Parliament shows that
Protection will be restored: as the ministry could command only the mean
majority of 21.

A few years hence McCulloch will be remembered only as the compiler of a
few indifferent books of reference, and Cobden as the author of much ill
to the people of England. Many of these men have ideas that are sound;
but they know nothing of the principles of the science they undertake to
teach; and so they are continually making blunders. Of all the French
writers of the first forty years of this century, only one, Jean
Baptiste Say, has lived to the middle of it, and his work is only a mass
of error in an imposing form.

This may be called sweeping criticism; but time will prove that it is
just. We need principles, as the astronomers did before Copernicus,
Kepler and Newton, gave them the laws which govern the movements of the
universe. Others observed facts and wrote treatises, but only these
names have lived. Ricardo and Malthus furnished what they believed to be
the great natural laws in regard to land and the sources of its value;
the relation of the laborer and the capitalist; and of population. Their
names are still familiar, but their theories are shattered by the
assaults of critics; they will be forgotten, and their places will be
occupied by those of the great author of whose works we propose to
write. Ricardo and Malthus will be to Carey as Ptolemy to Copernicus.

From 1803, a period of almost fifty years, since Ricardo published his
doctrine of Rent, there has not been even an attempt, except Carey's, to
add any thing to political economy. Senior, Whateley, and a thousand
others, have been disputing about words, while as many others have been
attacking Malthus and Ricardo; but no one has attempted to discover
laws, to take the place of those which were assailed. Of the supporters
of these writers, every one has been compelled to admit that their laws
did not cover the facts, and to interpolate accommodating passages. John
Stuart Mill, in his recent work, has done this even more largely than
his pr