ign treatment' (treatment appropriate
to the merits), thus at once realizing two rational purposes, viz.,
giving a useful function to a word, which at present has none, and also
providing an intelligible expression for an idea which otherwise is left
without means of uttering itself except through a ponderous
circumlocution. Precisely in the same circumstances of idle and absurd
sequestration stands the term _polemic_. At present, according to the
popular usage, this word has some fantastic inalienable connection with
controversial theology. There cannot be a more childish chimera. No
doubt there is a polemic side or aspect of theology; but so there is of
_all_ knowledge; so there is of _every_ science. The radical and
characteristic idea concerned in this term _polemic_ is found in our own
Parliamentary distinction of _the good speaker_, as contrasted with _the
good debater_. The good speaker is he who unfolds the whole of a
question in its affirmative aspects, who presents these aspects in their
just proportions, and according to their orderly and symmetrical
deductions from each other. But the good debater is he who faces the
negative aspects of the question, who meets sudden objections, has an
answer for any momentary summons of doubt or difficulty, dissipates
seeming inconsistencies, and reconciles the geometrical smoothness of _a
priori_ abstractions with the coarse angularities of practical
experience. The great work of Ricardo is of necessity, and almost in
every page, polemic; whilst very often the particular objections or
difficulties, to which it replies, are not indicated at all, being
spread through entire systems, and assumed as _precognita_ that are
familiar to the learned student.

Writing to scholastic persons, I should be ashamed to explain, but
hoping that I write to many also of the non-scholastic, and even of the
unlearned, I rejoice to explain the proper sense of the word _implicit_.
As the word _condign_, so capable of an extended sense, is yet
constantly restricted to one miserable association, viz., that with the
word _punishment_ (for we never say, as we might say, 'condign
rewards'), so also the word _implicit_ is in English always associated
with the word _faith_. People say that Papists have an _implicit_ faith
in their priests. What they mean is this: If a piece of arras, or a
carpet, is folded up, then it is _implicit_ according to the original
Latin word; if it is unfolded and displayed