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.