possible modification
of character by education was one of the Utilitarian tenets. If
Ricardo had said broadly that a necessary condition of the improvement
of the poor was a change of the average character, I think that he
would have been saying what was perfectly true and very much to the
purpose both then and now. The objection to his version of a most
salutary doctrine is that it is stated in too narrow terms. The
ultimate unit, the human being, is indeed supposed to be capable of
great modification, but it is solely through increasing his foresight
as to the effects of multiplication that the change is supposed to be
attainable. The moral thus drawn implied a very limited view of the
true nature and influence of great social processes, and in practice
came too often to limiting possible improvement to the one condition
of letting things alone. Let a man starve if he will not work, and he
will work. That, as a sole remedy, may be insufficient; though, even
in that shape, it is a doctrine more likely to be overlooked than
overvalued. And meanwhile the acquiescence in the painful doctrine
that, as a matter of fact, labourers would always multiply to
starvation point, was calculated to produce revolt against the whole
system. Macaulay's doctrine that the Utilitarians had made political
economy unpopular was so far true that the average person resented the
unpleasant doctrines thus obtruded upon him in their most unpleasant
shape; and, if he was told that they were embodied logic, revolted
against logic itself.

V. THE RICARDIANS

It will be quite sufficient to speak briefly of the minor prophets who
expounded the classical doctrine; sometimes falling into fallacies,
against which Ricardo's logical instinct had warned him; and sometimes
perhaps unconsciously revealing errors which really lurked in his
premises. When Ricardo died, James Mill told M'Culloch that they were
'the two and only genuine disciples' of their common friend.[347] Mill
wrote what he intended for a Schoolbook of Political Economy.[348]
Brief, pithy, and vigorous, it purports to give the essential
principles in their logical order; but, as his son remarks,[349] had
only a passing importance. M'Culloch took a more important place by
his writings in the _Edinburgh Review_ and elsewhere, and by his
lectures at Edinburgh and at London. He was one of the first
professors of the new university. His _Principles of Political
Economy_[350] became a text-