PREFACE. XXV premises to the conclusion, and flinching from no consequences at which it arrives, forms a sort of experimentum crucis, by which the truth or falsity of the principles maintained will be ren- dered manifest, and is the very kind of exposi- tion which an examiner of their correctness would desire. It was in fact the clear, able, and uncompro- mising manner in which the author of the Dia- logues explained the principles of Mr. Ricardo, together with the startling and (the present writer must be permitted to say) the extrava- gant consequences to which he pushed them, that first suggested the following treatise, the author of which takes this opportunity of ex- pressing his regret (a regret shared by many others), that discussions so valuable for either confirming or disproving the doctrines which they enforced, should not have been conducted to their proper and their promised termination.