Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/147

Rh Ricardo's Letters and not in his Principles, and they form part of the contribution made by recent economic research to the correct appreciation of the bearings of his theories on practice.

Nor, again, would it be easy to discover in any writer a more candid avowal of faults of composition than that furnished in some other extracts from this same correspondence. 'My speaking,' he states, 'is like my writing too much compressed. I am too apt to crowd a great deal of difficult matter into so short a space as to be incomprehensible to the generality of readers.' 'I am but a poor master of language, and therefore I shall fail to express what I mean.' 'I am fully aware of the deficiency in the style and arrangement; those are faults which I shall never conquer.' In the light shed by such passages as these it becomes easier to understand why his Principles have the appearance of a collection of detached notes rather than a formal treatise, and why he is often content with an isolated statement, unexplained and unrepeated, of the conditions which he assumes. But it also becomes more improbable that the characteristic theory of such a writer can with advantage or success be immediately applied to practice. It is even more likely than the theories of other writers to stand in need of limiting qualifications. It is more certain to be marked by a nicety of distinction, to which only a rough parallel can be found, or established, in fact. It subjects the student, who would understand its delicate refinements, to a stern intellectual discipline, which might naturally beget an extreme caution in practice.

Professor Sidgwick has remarked, that in what is 'commonly known' as 'the Ricardian theory of rent' three different theories are combined, based on 'different kinds of evidence, and relating to different' inquiries. The first is a 'historical theory as to the origin of rent,' the second a 'statical theory of the economic forces tending to determine rent at the present time, and the third a 'dynamical theory of the causes continually tending to increase rent, as wealth and population increases.' Although these three theories are, as Professor Sidgwick shows, distinct from one another, there is some bond of connection between them, and, at any rate, the considerations, which bear on their respective relations to practice, are similar in general character. It will, however, be convenient to examine the assumptions involved in Ricardo's reasoning from the standpoint, in the first instance, of the 'statical theory.' That seems to follow as a corollary from the market-price of the produce of land, which is determined by the