Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/456

440 benefit of the weary traveller. Even this latter portion was not entirely neglected, for the waste-pipe conveyed the part which ran over from the ladle to some delicious strawberry beds at a lower level. Perhaps, by a small addition to this ingenious arrangement, some kind-hearted travellers might be enabled to indulge their mules and asses with a taste of the same cool and refreshing fluid; thus paying an additional tribute to the skill and sagacity of the benevolent proprietor. My accomplished friend would doubtless make a most popular Chancellor of the Exchequer, should his Sardinian Majesty require his services in that department of administration.

In the course of my examination of this question I arrived at what I conceive to be a demonstration of the following principle:—

That even wider circumstances of the most absolute monopoly, the monopolist will, if he his own interest and  it, sell the article he produces at exactly the same price as the freest competition would produce.

I devoted a chapter to this subject in an edition which I prepared several years ago for a new Italian translation of the "Economy of Manufactures;" but I am not aware whether it has yet been published.

The explanation which I gave of the nature of miracles in "The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise," published in May, 1837, has now stood the test of more than a quarter of a century, during which it has been examined by some of the deepest thinkers in many countries. Its adoption by those writers who have referred to it has, as far as my information goes, been unanimous.