A Sketch Of The History Of Political Economy.

laws of production, in his way Malthus was adding to the [pg 017] means by which a better knowledge of the principles of distribution was to be obtained; and the next advance, owing to the sharp discussions of the time on the corn laws, was, by a natural progress, to the law of diminishing returns and rent. An independent discovery of the law of rent is to be assigned to no less than four persons,32 but for the full perception of its truth and its connection with other principles of political economy the credit has been rightly given to David Ricardo,33 next to Adam Smith without question the greatest economist of the English school. Curiously enough, although Adam Smith was immersed in abstract speculations, his “homely sagacity” led him to the most practical results; but while Ricardo was an experienced and successful man of business, he it was, above all others, who established the abstract political economy, in the sense of a body of scientific laws to which concrete phenomena, in spite of temporary inconsistencies, must in the end conform. His work, therefore, supplemented that of Adam Smith; and there are very few doctrines fully worked out to-day of which hints have not been found in Ricardo's wonderfully compact statements. [pg 018] With no graces of exposition, his writings seem dry, but are notwithstanding mines of valuable suggestions.