xxil

PREFACE.

which no subsequent severity of logic could
compensate.
Perhaps these remarks will serve to explain
how it is, that Mr. Ricardo has been eulogized
for his inexorable consistency in the use of
words, and particularly for his sternly insisting
on the true sense of the word value, and on
using it only in one sense*. If the author of
the following pages has been at all successful,
in establishing the justdess of the strictures
which he has hazarded, this praise must be allowed

 to be unfounded ; for itwill be seen, that in
the case of the word value he has almost perpetually
 forsaken his own definition : yet an inconsistency
 of this sort is by no means incompatible
with a general strictness in the employment of
terms. If the preceding observations are correct,
 a writer may be rigorously consistent in

* Templars’ Dialogues, Introduction.