_X_. But an instance of far greater disingenuousness is this: Mr. Ricardo, after laying down the general law of value, goes on to state three cases in which that law will be modified; and the extraordinary sagacity with which he has detected and stated these modifications, and the startling consequences to which they lead, have combined to make this one of the most remarkable chapters in his books. Now, it is a fact, gentlemen, that these very restrictions of his own law--so openly stated as restrictions by Mr. Ricardo--are brought forward by Mr. Malthus as so many objections of his own to upset that law. The logic, as usual, is worthy of notice; for it is as if, in a question about the force of any projectile, a man should urge the resistance of the air, not as a limitation of that force, but as a capital objection to it. What I here insist on, however, is its extreme disingenuousness. But this is a subject which it is unpleasant to pursue; and the course of our subject will of itself bring us but too often across the blunders and misstatements of Mr. Malthus. To recur, therefore, to what you objected about Mr. Ricardo--that he was said to be paradoxical and obscure--I presume that you use the word "paradoxical" in the common and improper sense, as denoting what has a specious air of truth and subtlety, but is in fact false; whereas I need not tell _you_ that a paradox is the very opposite of this--meaning in effect what has a specious air of falsehood, though possibly very true; for a paradox, you know, is simply that which contradicts the popular opinion--which in too many cases is the false opinion; and in none more inevitably than in cases as remote from the popular understanding as all questions of severe science. However, use the word in what sense you please, Mr. Ricardo is no ways interested in the charge. Are my doctrines true, are they demonstrable? is the question for him; if not, let them be overthrown; if _that_ is beyond any man's power, what matters it to him that the slumbering intellect of the multitude regards them as strange? As to obscurity, in general it is of two kinds--one arising out of the writer's own perplexity of thought; which is a vicious obscurity; and in this sense the opponents of Mr. Ricardo are the obscurest of all economists. Another kind-- _Phæd_. Ay, now let us hear what is a virtuous obscurity.