If our laws had been of the unchangeable character which has been ascribed to those of the Medes and Persians, we might have investigated the nature and sources of wealth with the impartiality with which we study the motions of the heavenly bodies. No one would have felt himself interested in denying conclusions which would have been unsusceptible of practical application. That wealth consists, not of money, but of the things which money can purchase,--that it is not lessened by resorting to the cheapest market,--that it is not augmented by augmenting the nominal value of the tokens by which it is measured,--that it increases with the increasing productiveness of labour, and diminishes if more labour be required to produce a given result,--that the profits of commerce consist not in what is given, but in what is received, are propositions which might have been neglected as truisms, or alluded to as self-evident, but could scarcely have been made the subjects of eager controversy. Monopolies would never have been defended, if monopolists had been secure. It is to the difference in this respect in the state of Europe, that I ascribe the difference in the degree of clamour which was raised against Adam Smith in England, and the earlier economists in France, and that which has been directed against their successors in both countries. The doctrines of Quesnay and Smith were as much opposed to existing abuses as those of Malthus or of Ricardo; but there did not appear to be the same chance of their application. While restriction and prohibition was the rule, and apparently the unalterable rule, political economists were forgiven for proclaiming the advantages of free trade. The theory was even admitted as long as the practice seemed at a distance. But these halcyon times are over: it is becoming every day more apparent, that whatever is generally believed to be expedient, will sooner or later be attempted; and that institutions are to be attacked and defended, not by force, but by argument,--not by mere clamour, or dogged refusal, but by convincing the public of the benefit or of the disadvantage of the proposed alteration.