ience. For this as for some
other passages I was justly[32] attacked by an able and liberal critic
in the _New Edinburgh Review_--as for so many absurd irrelevancies: in
that situation no doubt they were so; and of this, in spite of the
haste in which I had written the greater part of the book, I was fully
aware. However, as they said no more than was true, I was glad to take
that or any occasion which I could invent for offering my public
testimony of gratitude to Mr. Ricardo. The truth is--I thought that
something might occur to intercept any more appropriate mode of
conveying my homage to Mr. Ricardo's ear, which should else more
naturally have been expressed in a direct work on Political Economy.
This fear was at length realised--not in the way I had apprehended,
viz. by my own death--but by Mr. Ricardo's. And now therefore I felt
happy that, at whatever price of good taste, I had in some imperfect
way made known my sense of his high pretensions--although
unfortunately I had given him no means of judging whether my applause
were of any value. For during the interval between Sept. 1821 and Mr.
Ricardo's death in Sept. 1823 I had found no leisure for completing my
work on Political Economy: on that account I had forborne to use the
means of introduction to Mr. Ricardo which I commanded through my
private connections or simply as a man of letters: and in some measure
therefore I owed it to my own neglect--that I had for ever lost the
opportunity of benefiting by Mr. Ricardo's conversation or bringing
under his review such new speculations of mine in Political Economy as
in any point modified his own doctrines--whether as corrections of
supposed oversights, as derivations of the same truth from a higher
principle, as further illustrations or proofs of anything which he
might have insufficiently developed, or simply in the way of
supplement to his known and voluntary omissions. All this I should
have done with the utmost fearlessness of giving offence, and not for
a moment believing that Mr. Ricardo would have regarded anything in
the light of an undue liberty, which in the remotest degree might
seem to affect the interests of a science so eminently indebted to
himself. In reality candour may be presumed in a man of first-rate
understanding--not merely as a moral quality--but almost as a part of
his intellectual constitution _per se_; a spacious and commanding
intellect being magnanimous in a manner _suo jure_, even thoug