Now, if the term labour be taken in the sense in which it is used by Mr. Ricardo, the proposition is contradicted by universal experience. If, on the other hand, the term labour be considered as including profits, the proposition is true; but only because it is a totally different one from that of Mr. Ricardo, owing to a most unwarrantable perversion of terms. It appears, then, on the whole, that although Mr. Macculloch has at different times compared Adam Smith to Newton and to Locke, he has, in the definition and application of his terms, differed from him on almost all the most important subjects of Political Economy,—in the definition of wealth, the definition of capital, the definition of productive and unproductive labour, the definition of profits, the definition of labour simply, and the definition of _real value_, though, in the last instance, it is rather professedly than substantially.[48] However highly I may respect the authority of Adam Smith, and however inconvenient at first a great change of terms and meanings must necessarily be, yet if it could be made out that such changes would essentially facilitate the explanation and improvement of the science of political economy, I should have been the last to oppose them. But after considering them with much attention, I own I feel the strongest conviction that they are eminently the reverse of being _useful_, with a view to an explanation of the _nature and causes of the wealth of nations_; or, in more modern, though not more appropriate phrase, the _production, distribution, and consumption of wealth_. I have too much respect for Mr. Macculloch to suppose that he has differed from Adam Smith on so many points with the intention of giving to his work a greater air of originality. This is, no doubt, a feeling which not unfrequently operates in favour of changes; but I do not think it did on the present occasion. I should rather suppose that he adopted them in consequence of seeing some objections to Adam Smith’s definitions, without being sufficiently aware that, in the less strict sciences, nothing is so easy as to find some objection to a definition, and nothing so difficult as to substitute an unobjectionable one in its place.