Ricardo left his doctrine of Rents; Malthus his principle of Population; their books are little read now, and they themselves would have been long since forgotten, but that they taught what had been taught by no others. Of the hundreds of their countrymen who have since written, scarcely one has furnished a new idea; or if such an idea can be found in the books of any one, it will not bear investigation. Many have collected facts, that are useful, and all of them have talked and written about their facts and theories; but only as empirics. One man contended on one side and another on another, and there was no standard by which to judge them. Ricardo and Malthus gave laws that would not fit the facts, and the facts were altered and suppressed to suit the laws.[22] McCulloch taught that transportation and exchange were more advantageous than production,[23] and Cobden that it was better to go to colonies in which _rich_ lands were to be had cheap, than to stay at home where landlords charged high rents for the _poor_ ones that were necessarily cultivated: and therefore that imported food would be cheaper than that which was grown at home. The result has proved that he was wrong. Food is now obtained with more difficulty than before; emigration is necessary, and the late decision in Parliament shows that Protection will be restored: as the ministry could command only the mean majority of 21. A few years hence McCulloch will be remembered only as the compiler of a few indifferent books of reference, and Cobden as the author of much ill to the people of England. Many of these men have ideas that are sound; but they know nothing of the principles of the science they undertake to teach; and so they are continually making blunders. Of all the French writers of the first forty years of this century, only one, Jean Baptiste Say, has lived to the middle of it, and his work is only a mass of error in an imposing form. This may be called sweeping criticism; but time will prove that it is just. We need principles, as the astronomers did before Copernicus, Kepler and Newton, gave them the laws which govern the movements of the universe. Others observed facts and wrote treatises, but only these names have lived. Ricardo and Malthus furnished what they believed to be the great natural laws in regard to land and the sources of its value; the relation of the laborer and the capitalist; and of population. Their names are still familiar, but their theories are shattered by the assaults of critics; they will be forgotten, and their places will be occupied by those of the great author of whose works we propose to write. Ricardo and Malthus will be to Carey as Ptolemy to Copernicus.