[181] Incidentally, Sismondi's Leipsic Book Fair, as a microcosm of the capitalist world, has staged a come-back after 55 years--in Eugen Duehring's 'system'. Engels, in his devastating criticism of that unfortunate 'universal genius' adduces this idea as proof that Duehring, by attempting to elucidate a real industrial crisis by means of an imaginary one on the Leipsic Book Fair, a storm at sea by a storm in a teacup, has shown himself a 'real German _literatus_'. But, as in many other instances exposed by Engels, the great thinker has simply borrowed here from someone else on the sly. [182] Sismondi, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 381-2. [183] MacCulloch, loc. cit., p. 470. [184] Sismondi, op. cit, vol. ii, p. 384. [185] MacCulloch, loc. cit., p. 471. [186] Sismondi, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 394-5. [187] Ibid., pp. 396-7. [188] Ibid., pp. 397-8. [189] MacCulloch, loc. cit., pp. 471-2. [190] Sismondi, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 400-1. [191] Sismondi, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 401. [192] Ibid., pp. 405-6. _CHAPTER XII_ RICARDO _v._ SISMONDI MacCulloch's reply to Sismondi's theoretical objections evidently did not settle the matter to Ricardo's own satisfaction. Unlike that shrewd 'Scottish arch-humbug', as Marx calls him, Ricardo really wanted to discover the truth and throughout retained the genuine modesty of a great mind.[193] That Sismondi's polemics against him and his pupil had made a deep impression is proved by Ricardo's revised approach to the question of the effects of the machine, that being the point on which Sismondi, to his eternal credit, had confronted the classical school of harmony with the sinister aspects of capitalism. Ricardo's followers had enlarged upon the doctrine that the machine can always create as many or even more opportunities for the wage labourers as it takes away by displacing living labour. This so-called theory of compensation was subjected to a stern attack by Sismondi in the chapter 'On the Division of Labour and Machinery'[194] and in another chapter significantly entitled: 'Machinery Creates a Surplus Population',[195] both published in the _Nouveaux Principes_ of 1819, two years later than Ricardo's main work. In 1821, after the MacCulloch-Sismondi controversy, Ricardo inserted a new chapter in the third edition of his _Principles_, where he frankly confesses to his error and says in the strain of Sismondi: 'That the opinion entertained by the labouring classes, that the employment of machinery is frequently detrimental to their interests, is not founded on prejudice and error, but is conformable to the correct principles of political economy.'[196]