rcantile system,' was Smith's
primary task.

Beyond or beneath these questions lie difficulties, which Smith,
though not blind to their existence, treated in a vacillating and
inconsistent fashion. Variations of supply and demand cause
fluctuations in the price; but what finally determines the point to
which the fluctuating prices must gravitate? We follow the process by
which one wave propagates another; but there is still the question,
What ultimately fixes the normal level? Upon this point Ricardo could
find no definite statement in his teacher. 'Supply and demand' was a
sacred phrase which would always give a verbal answer, or indicate the
immediate cause of variations on the surface. Beneath the surface
there must be certain forces at work which settle why a quarter of
corn 'gravitates' to a certain price; why the landlord can get just so
many quarters of corn for the use of his fields; and why the produce,
which is due jointly to the labourer and the farmer, is divided in a
certain fixed proportion. To settle such points it is necessary to
answer the problem of distribution, for the play of the industrial
forces is directed by the constitution of the classes which co-operate
in the result. Ricardo saw in Malthus's doctrines of rent and of
population a new mode of approaching the problem. What was wanted, in
the first place, was to systematise the logic adopted by his
predecessors. Rent, it was clear, could not be both a cause and an
effect of price, though at different points of his treatise Smith had
apparently accepted each view of the relation. We must first settle
which is cause and which effect; and then bring our whole system into
the corresponding order. For the facts, Ricardo is content to trust
mainly to others. The true title of his work should be that which his
commentator, De Quincey, afterwards adopted, the _Logic of Political
Economy_. This aim gives a partial explanation of the characteristic
for which Ricardo is most generally criticised. He is accused of being
abstract in the sense of neglecting facts. He does not deny the
charge. 'If I am too theoretical (which I really believe to be the
case) you,' he says to Malthus, 'I think, are too practical.'[302] If
Malthus is more guided than Ricardo by a reference to facts, he has of
course an advantage. But so far as Malthus or Adam Smith
theorised--and, of course, their statement of facts involved a
theory--they were at least bound to be consistent. I