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Phil
. “Imis!” Why, I hope, if Mr. Ricardo may do for the Cesar of the case, Mr. Malthus is not therefore to be thought the Metellus. “Imis,” indeed!

X
. As to this, he is: his general merits of good sense and ingenuity we all acknowledge; but for the office of a distinguisher, or any other which demands logic in the first place, it is impossible to conceive any person below him. To go on, however, with my instance:– this objection of Mr. Malthus’ about “cost” and “value” was founded purely on a very great blunder of his own–so great, that (as I shall show in its proper place) even Mr. Ricardo did not see the whole extent of his misconception: thus much, however, was plain, that the meaning of Mr. Malthus was, that the new doctrine of value allowed for wages, but did not allow for profits; and thus, according to the Malthusian terminology, expressed the cost but not the value of a thing. What was Mr. Ricardo’s answer? In the third edition of his book (p. 46), he told Mr. Malthus that, if the word “cost” were understood in any sense which excluded profits, then he did not assert the thing attributed to him; on the other hand, if it were understood in a sense which included profits, then of course he did assert it; but, then, in that sense Mr. Malthus himself did not deny it. This plain answer was published in 1821. Will it be believed that two years after (namely, in the spring of 1823), Mr. Malthus published a pamphlet, in which he repeats the same objection over and over again, without a hint that it had ever met with a conclusive explanation which it was impossible to misunderstand? Neither must it be alleged that Mr. Malthus might not have seen this third edition; for it is the very edition which he constantly quotes in that pamphlet.

Phed
. What say you to this, my dear Philebus? You seem to be in perplexity.

X
. But an instance of far greater disingenuousness is this: Mr. Ricardo, after laying down the general law of value, goes on to state three cases in which that law will be modified; and the extraordinary sagacity with which he has detected and stated these modifications, and the startling consequences to which they lead, have combined to make this one of the most remarkable chapters in his books. Now, it is a fact, gentlemen, that these very restrictions of his own law–so openly stated as restrictions by Mr. Ricardo–are brought forward by Mr. Malthus as so many objections of his own to upset that law. The logic, as usual, is worthy of notice; for it is as if, in a question about the force of any projectile, a man should urge the resistance of the air, not as a limitation of that force, but as a capital objection to it. What I here insist on, however, is its extreme disingenuousness. But this is a subject which it is unpleasant to pursue; and the course of our subject will of itself bring us but too often across the blunders and misstatements of Mr. Malthus. To recur, therefore, to what you objected about Mr. Ricardo–that he was said to be paradoxical and obscure–I presume that you use the word “paradoxical” in the common and improper sense, as denoting what has a specious air of truth and subtlety, but is in fact false; whereas I need not tell you that a paradox is the very opposite of this–meaning in effect what has a specious air of falsehood, though possibly very true; for a paradox, you know, is simply that which contradicts the popular opinion–which in too many cases is the false opinion; and in none more inevitably than in cases as remote from the popular understanding as all questions of severe science. However, use the word in what sense you please, Mr. Ricardo is no ways interested in the charge. Are my doctrines true, are they demonstrable? is the question for him; if not, let them be overthrown; if that is beyond any man’s power, what matters it to him that the slumbering intellect of the multitude regards them as strange? As to obscurity, in general it is of two kinds–one arising out of the writer’s own perplexity of thought; which is a vicious obscurity; and in this sense the opponents of Mr. Ricardo are the obscurest of all economists. Another kind–