PREFACE. Xy a superiority above Adam Smith, as a profound and original thinker, can be inferred from their respective works. To raise the science from the condition in which it was found by the lat- ter, to that state of dignity and importance in which it appeared in the Wealth of Nations, seems to an ordinary view to have required a far more comprehensive mind, and oreater powers of skilful disquisition, than to discover and to follow out to their consequences the ori- ginal truths, few or many, which distinguish the pages of the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. The praise, too, of dexterity in unra- velling difficult questions is surely misapplied. The obscurity which is almost universally felt, and felt even by readers accustomed to close- ness of reasoning, and not sparing of vigorous attention, in many of Mr. Ricardo’s discussions, incontestably proves, even on the supposition of their perfect accuracy, a want of skill in the ma.