s doctrines in an offensive shape. A reference to Owen
suggests that the alarm excited by Socialism had suggested the need of
some sound political economy.

Another controversy which was being carried on at intervals indicates
the line of cleavage between the capitalist and the landed interest.
James Mill's early pamphlet, _Commerce Defended_ (1808), and Torrens's
pamphlet, _Economists Refuted_, were suggested by this discussion.
Although the war was partly in defence of British trade, its
vicissitudes produced various commercial crises; and the patriotic
Tories were anxious to show that we could thrive even if our trade was
shut out from the Continent. The trading classes maintained that they
really supplied the sinews of war, and had a right to some control of
the policy. The controversy about the orders in council and Berlin
decrees emphasised these disputes, and called some attention to the
questions involved in the old controversy between the 'mercantile' and
the 'agricultural' systems. A grotesque exaggeration of one theory was
given by Mill's opponent, William Spence[395] (1783-1860), in his
_Britain independent of Commerce_, which went through several editions
in 1808, and refurbished or perverted the doctrine of the French
economists. The argument, at least, shows what fallacies then needed
confutation by the orthodox. In the preface to his collected tracts,
Spence observes that the high price of corn was the cause of 'all our
wealth and prosperity during the war.' The causes of the high price
('assisted,' he admits, 'by occasional bad seasons') were the
'national debt, in other words, taxation,' which raised the price,
first, of necessaries, and then of luxuries (thus, he says,
'neutralising its otherwise injurious effects'), and the virtual
monopoly by the agriculturist of the home market.[396] All our wealth,
that is, was produced by taxation aided by famine, or, in brief, by
the landowner's power of squeezing more out of the poor. Foreign
trade, according to Spence, is altogether superfluous. Its effect is
summed up by the statement that we give hardware to America, and, in
return, get only 'the vile weed, tobacco.'[397] Spence's writings only
show the effect of strong prejudices on a weak brain. A similar
sentiment dictated a more noteworthy argument to a much abler writer,
whose relation to Malthus is significant--Thomas Chalmers
(1780-1847),[398] probably best remembered at present for his
leadership of