[209] Thus, if Tugan Baranovski, championing Say-Ricardo's views, tells us about the controversy between Sismondi and Ricardo (_Studies on the Theory and History of Commercial Crises in England_, p. 176), that Sismondi was compelled 'to acknowledge as correct the doctrine he had attacked and to concede his opponent all that is necessary'; that Sismondi himself 'had abandoned his own theory which still finds so many adherents', and that 'the victory in this controversy lies with Ricardo', this shows a lack of discrimination--to put it mildly--such as is practically unheard-of in a work of serious scientific pretensions. _CHAPTER XIII_ SAY _v_. SISMONDI Sismondi's essay against Ricardo in the _Revue Encyclopédique_ of May 1824, was the final challenge for J. B. Say, at that time the acknowledged 'prince of economic science' (_prince de la science économique_), the so-called representative, heir and populariser of the school of Adam Smith on the Continent. Say, who had already advanced some arguments against Sismondi in his letters to Malthus, countered the following July with an essay on 'The Balance Between Consumption and Production' in the _Revue Encyclopédique_, to which Sismondi in turn published a short reply. The chronology of Sismondi's polemical engagements was thus inverse to the sequence of the opposing theories, for it had been Say who first communicated his doctrine of a divinely established balance between production and consumption to Ricardo who had in turn handed it down to MacCulloch. In fact, as early as 1803, Say, in his _Traité d'Économie Politique_, book i, chapter xii, had coined the following peremptory statement: 'Products are paid for with other products. It follows that if a nation has too many goods of one kind, the means of selling them would be to create goods of a different kind.'[210] Here we meet again the all too familiar conjuring recipe which was accepted alike by Ricardo's school and by the 'vulgar economists' as the corner-stone of the doctrine of harmony.[211] Essentially, Sismondi's principal work constitutes a sustained polemic against this thesis. At this stage Say charges to the attack in the _Revue Encyclopédique_ with a complete _volte-face_, as follows: