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[Footnote: The eleventh is on Tithes; and the eighteenth on Poor Rates; but these of course belong to the subject of Taxation properly defined. The present Lord Chancellor (late Earl of Eldon) said on some cause which came before him about a year ago, that Tithes were unjustly called a Tax; meaning only that Tithes were not any arbitrary imposition of the government, but claimed by as good a tenure as any other sort of property. In this doctrine no doubt the Chancellor was perfectly right; and only wrong in supposing that any denial of that doctrine is implied by the Political Economists in calling Tithes a Tax; which, on the true definition of a Tax (as I shall show hereafter), they certainly are. ]

inclusively, the twenty- second, twenty-third, and twenty-ninth; and these may be entirely omitted by the student, and ought at any rate to be omitted on his first examination of the work. For, though Mr. Ricardo has really been not the chief so much as the sole author of any important truths on the subject of Taxation, and though his fourteen chapters on that head are so many inestimable corollaries from his general doctrines, and could never have been obtained without them, yet these general doctrines have no sort of reciprocal dependency upon what concerns Taxation. Consequently, it will greatly lighten the burden to a student if these fourteen chapters are sequestered from the rest of the work, and reserved for a separate and after investigation, which may furnish a commentary on the first. The chapters on Taxation deducted, there remain, therefore, seventeen in the second edition, or eighteen in the third. These contain the general principles, but also something more– which may furnish matter for a second subtraction. For, in most speculations of this nature it usually happens that, over and above the direct positive communication of new truths, a writer finds it expedient (or, perhaps, necessary in some cases, in order to clear the ground for himself) to address part of his efforts to the task of meeting the existing errors; hence arises a division of his work into the doctrinal or affirmative part, and the polemic

[Footnote: Polemic.–There is an occasional tendency in the use and practice of the English language capriciously to limit the use of certain words. Thus, for instance, the word condign is used only in connection with the word punishment; the word implicit is used only (unless by scholars, like Milton) in connection with faith, or confidence. So also putative is restricted most absurdly to the one sole word, father, in a question of doubtful affiliation. These and other words, if unlocked from their absurd imprisonment, would become extensively useful. We should say, for instance, “condign honors,” “condign rewards,” “condign treatment” (treatment appropriate to the merits)–thus at once realizing two rational purposes: namely, giving a useful function to a word, which at present has none; and also providing an intelligible expression for an idea which otherwise is left without means of uttering itself, except through a ponderous circumlocution. Precisely in the same circumstances of idle and absurd sequestration stands the term polemic. At present, according to the popular usage, this word has some fantastic inalienable connection with controversial theology. There cannot be a more childish chimera. No doubt there is a polemic side or aspect of theology; but so there is of all knowledge; so there is of every science. The radical and characteristic idea concerned in this term polemic is found in our own parliamentary distinction of the good speaker, as contrasted with the good debater. The good speaker is he who unfolds the whole of a question in its affirmative aspects, who presents these aspects in their just proportions, and according to their orderly and symmetrical deductions from each other. But the good debater is he who faces the negative aspects of the question, who meets sudden objections, has an answer for any momentary summons of doubt or difficulty, dissipates seeming inconsistencies, and reconciles the geometrical smoothness of a priori abstractions with the coarse angularities of practical experience. The great work of Ricardo is of necessity, and almost in every page, polemic; whilst very often the particular objections or difficulties to which it replies are not indicated at all–being spread through entire systems, and assumed as precognita that are familiar to the learned student.]