Vii

PREFACE.

works of some of the most celebrated writers on
these momentous topics, are sufficient to make
the student abandon his inquiries on the very
threshold of the science. Words used without
determinate ideas, terms introduced without
proper explanations, definitions abandoned almost
 as soon as enunciated, principles assumed
without first being examined, verbal instead of
real simplifications— such are the obstacles
which everywhere meet him.
That defects of this kind disfigure the science
of political economy, no one acquainted with
the most recent works on the subject will probably
 deny, although a difference of opinion
may exist regarding the extent to which they
prevail. It would be presumptuous in the
author of the following treatise to suppose, that
he had completely removed them from that
part of the science which he has attempted to
examine. He trusts, nevertheless, that he has