that Ricardo's Jewish nationality, and his occupation on the London Stock Exchange. were likely to have nourished a fondness and capacity for abstractions. We might have made ourselves aware that the actual phenomena of industry when he wrote presented a scene of confusing stir and bustling change, which almost seemed anarchical, and that, in arranging these phenomena in an intelligible order, and interpreting them by the assumption of the pervading presence of competition, he formed a conception of society, which did not appear to differ widely from actual fact. We might have informed ourselves that the subject on which he first wrote—that of money in its connection with the foreign exchanges—had since been recognised as so perplexing in its intricacy that it would be futile to attempt to unravel its tangled web without the aid of an abstract, deductive method. Nor were we without the opportunity of learning that the publication of a systematic treatise by Ricardo was due to the pressure of friends belonging to the school of thought, which centred round the name of Bentham, and believed in the exclusive advantage of rigid analysis and deduction from a few simple principles. So much as this might have been known; and Senior, who was an acute observer, had uttered[1] the pregnant remark that Ricardo's own 'sagacity prevented his making sufficient allowance for the stupidity or carelessness of his readers, and he was too earnest a lover of truth to anticipate wilful misconstruction.'
But the publication of Ricardo's Letters to Malthus has made important additions to this available knowledge. They disclose in a vivid and unmistakable fashion the real intention of his work and the true character of his mind. They show at once in what lay his peculiar strength and his special weakness. 'Our differences,' he writes to Malthus in one of these letters, 'may in some respects, I think, be ascribed to your considering my book as more practical than I intended it to be. My object was to elucidate principles, and to do this I imagined strong cases, that I might show the operation of those principles.' And on another occasion he remarked: 'You have always in your mind the immediate and temporary effects of particular changes, whereas I put these immediate and temporary effects quite aside, and fix my whole attention on the permanent state of things which will result from them, Perhaps you estimate these temporary effects too highly, while I am too much disposed to undervalue them.' It would be difficult for a writer to explain more clearly the object which he had in view; but these passages are contained in
- ↑ Political Economy, p. 118.
