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xviii be disputing about it publicly, to the loss of many millions of pounds to the country. The fact which vulgar economists have been weak enough to imagine a law, is only that, for the last twenty years a number of very senseless persons have attempted to determine wages in that manner; and have, in a measure, succeeded in occasionally doing so. 13. Both in definition of the elements of wealth, and in statement of the laws which govern its distribution, modern political economy has been thus absolutely incompetent, or absolutely false. And the following treatise is not as it has been asserted with dull pertinacity, an endeavour to put sentiment in the place of science; but it contains the exposure of what insolently pretended to be a science; and the definition, hitherto unassailed—and I do not fear to assert, unassailable—of the material elements with which political economy has to deal, and the moral principles in which it consists; being not itself a science, but "a system of conduct founded on the sciences, and impossible, except under certain conditions of moral culture." Which is only to say, that industry, frugality, and discretion,