closer approximation must be made to the actual data.

I need not enlarge, however, upon a topic which has been so often
expounded. I think that at present the tendency is rather to do
injustice to the common-sense embodied in this system, to the
soundness of its aims, and to its value in many practical and
immediate questions, than to overestimate its claim to scientific
accuracy. That claim may be said to have become obsolete.

One point, however, remains. The holders of such a doctrine must, it
is said, have been without the bowels of compassion. Ricardo, as
critics observe with undeniable truth, was a Jew and a member of the
stock-exchange. Now Jews, in spite of Shylock's assertions, and
certainly Jewish stockbrokers, are naturally without human feeling. If
you prick them, they only bleed banknotes. They are fitted to be
capitalists, who think of wages as an item in an account, and of the
labourer as part of the tools used in business. Ricardo, however, was
not a mere money-dealer, nor even a walking treatise. He was a kindly,
liberal man, desirous to be, as he no doubt believed himself to be, in
sympathy with the leaders of political and scientific thought, and
fully sharing their aspirations. No doubt he, like his friends, was
more conspicuous for coolness of head than for impulsive
philanthropy. Like them, he was on his guard against 'sentimentalism'
and 'vague generalities,' and thought that a hasty benevolence was apt
to aggravate the evils which it attacked. The Utilitarians naturally
translated all aspirations into logical dogmas; but some people who
despised them as hard-hearted really took much less pains to give
effect to their own benevolent impulses. Now Ricardo, in this matter,
was at one with James Mill and Bentham, and especially Malthus.[341]
The essential doctrine of Malthus was that the poor could be made less
poor by an improved standard of prudence. In writing to Malthus,
Ricardo incidentally remarks upon the possibility of raising the
condition of the poor by 'good education' and the inculcation of
foresight in the great matter of marriage.[342] Incidental references
in the _Principles_ are in the same strain. He accepts Malthus's view
of the poor-laws, and hopes that, by encouraging foresight, we may by
degrees approach 'a sounder and more healthful state.'[343] He
repudiates emphatically a suggestion of Say that one of his arguments
implies 'indifference to the happiness' of the masses,[344]