Page:An Essay of the Impolicy of a Bounty on the Exportation of Grain (1804).djvu/46

Rh appear that conclusions, similar to those of Mr. Mackie. whether drawn from the same premises or not, are both’ adopted, and important regulations founded upon them for conducting the business of the nation. Let us hear to what extent Mr. Mackie's. objections reach. There are three different states in which Dr. Smith says the affairs of all countries may be considered as placed, the declining, stationary, or advancing states. In the first two of these, Mr. Mackie allows that the ideas of Dr. Smith hold completely, but denies that they do so in the third. “I readily,” says he, p. 319, “agree that the money price of corn may produce this effect (regulate the money price of all things) in a nation where the state of society is stationary or declining; such as China or Hindostan; but when applied to Britain, or any country advancing in wealth and population, the argument appears to me to be unfounded,” Mr. Mackie is one of that class of authors from whom you cannot get any precise account of the grounds of their opinions, who throw down a number of circumstances more or less remotely connected with the point in question, then assert the conclusion which they wish to draw, and leave you to find the connection between it and the premises the best way you can.

The most distinct statement of the reasons for his dissent from the conclusions of Smith, which I have found in the letter, is in these words, p. 221: “But in countries where industry, population, and