There has been of late exhibited in some quarters a tendency to apply the doctrine of the "survival of the fittest"to humansociety in such a way as to intensify the harsher features of Malthus's exposition by encouraging the idea that whatevercannot sustain itself is fated,and must be allowed,to disappear.But what is repellent in this conception is removed by awide view of the influence of humanity,as a disposing power,alike on vital and on social conditions.As in the generalanimal domain the supremacy of man introduces a new force consciously controlling and ultimately determining the destiniesof the subordinate species,so human providence in the social sphere can intervene for the protection of the weak,modifyingby its deliberate action what would otherwise be a mere contest of comparative strengths inspired by selfish instincts.(40)David Ricardo (1772-1823)is essentially of the school of Smith,whose doctrines he in the main accepts,whilst he seeks todevelop them,and to correct them in certain particulars.But his mode of treatment is very different from Smith's.The latteraims at keeping close to the realities of life as he finds them,--at representing the conditions and relations of men and thingsas they are;and,as Hume remarked on first reading his great work,his principles are everywhere exemplified and illustratedwith curious facts.Quite unlike this is the way in which Ricardo proceeds.He moves in a world of abstractions.He sets outfrom more or less arbitrary assumptions,reasons deductively from these,and announces his conclusions as true,withoutallowing for the partial unreality of the conditions assumed or confronting his results with experience.When he seeks toillustrate his doctrines,it is from hypothetical cases,--his favourite device being that of imagining two contracting savages,and considering how they would be likely to act.He does not explain --probably he had not systematically examined,perhaps was not competent to examine --the appropriate method of political economy;and the theoretic defence of hismode of proceeding was left to be elaborated by J.S.Mill and Cairnes.But his example had a great effect in determining thepractice of his successors.There was something highly attractive to the ambitious theorist in the sweeping march of logicwhich seemed in Ricardo's hands to emulate the certainty and comprehensiveness of mathematical proof,and in the portableand pregnant formulae which were so convenient in argument,and gave a prompt,if often a more apparent than real,solution of difficult problems.Whatever there was of false or narrow in the fundamental positions of Smith had been in agreat degree corrected by his practical sense and strong instinct for reality,but was br ought out in its full dimensions andeven exaggerated in the abstract theorems of Ricardo and his followers.
The dangers inherent in his method were aggravated by the extreme looseness of his phraseology .Senior pronounces him"the most incorrect writer who ever attained philosophical eminence."His most ardent admirers find him fluctuating anduncertain in the use of words,and generally trace his errors to a confusion between the ordinary employment of a term andsome special application of it which he has himself devised.
The most complete exposition of his system is to be found in his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817).Thiswork is not a complete treatise on the science,but a rather loosely connected series of disquisitions on value and price,rent,wages,and profits,taxes,trade,money and banking.Yet,though the connection of the parts is loose,the same fundamentalideas recur continually,and determine the character of the entire scheme.
The principal problem to which he addresses himself in this work is that of distribution,--that is to say,the proportions ofthe whole produce of the country which will be allotted to the proprietor of land,to the capitalist,and to the labourer.(41)And it is important to observe that it is especially the variations in their respective portions which take place in the progressof society that he professes to study,--one of the most unhistorical of writers thus indicating a sense of the necessity of adoctrine of economic dynamics --a doctrine which,from his point of view,it was impossible to supply.
