The chief interest of the present volume will probably be found to consist in the attempt made to give us something like a true perspective of certain modern theories by connecting them with their historical antecedents; and we can imagine its later pages being scanned with a great deal of justifiable curiosity. After all, the verdict of history upon the achievements of Smith, the measure of his indebtedness to his immediate predecessors, and the extent to which the “car of economic progress” was accelerated or retarded in its movements at the hands of Ricardo and his contemporaries is fairly well established by this time. On one point only do the present writers seem to challenge that verdict, namely, in their designation of Ricardo and Malthus as Pessimists. It is otherwise with the more modern writers, however. Their work has not the distinctness of that of the earlier writers, partly because we are not sufficiently removed from it as yet, and partly because some of it is obscured by the haze of party strife. But it may help us to a better understanding of their relative positions to learn, for example, that the Historical school, which set out on its career of conquest with a considerable flourish of trumpets, has not yet succeeded in giving us a new science of Political Economy; that the Marxian doctrine is already antiquated, in the opinion of certain members of that school; that the Socialism of the Fabian Society is merely a recrudescence of Ricardian economics, and that Anarchism is nothing but a violent form of Liberalism. * * * * * I cannot hope to have succeeded in retaining in this translation the freshness and vivacity of the original. But I have endeavoured to make the rendering as accurate as possible; and with this object in view considerable trouble has been taken to verify the quotations. As the title-page implies, the work was originally begun at the suggestion of the late Professor Smart of Glasgow, and to-day more than ever I am conscious of what I owe to his kindly criticism and genial encouragement. The passage of the book through the press has been watched with assiduous care by Mr. C. C. Wood, who is also responsible for the Index at the end of the volume. I can scarcely express the measure of my indebtedness to him. To my friends Mr. W. H. Porter, M.A., and Mr. J. G. Williams, M.A., both of Bangor, I am also indebted for reading some of the proofs. R. RICHARDS PREFACE