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 al- 
most 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 pro- 
bably 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