'This was the moment of the domination of the Ricardo religion.[Footnote: It will be remembered that the fundamental principle of the "Ricardian theory"--distinguishing it from that o± Adam Smith--is the determination of wages by the law of population. According to Ricardo, it is the influence of high or low wages on the numbers of the population which adjusts the "market rate" to the "natural rate."] It is admirably pointed out in Professor Ashley's address, as President of the Economic Section of the British Association, 1907, that this doctrine had become a complete creed, with a stronger hold over the educated classes of England (and I should add France) by 1821 than any creed has had. The Political Economy Club is shown by Ashley to have been the assembly of the elders of the Church, of which the founder assumed that they possessed a complete code, representing just principles necessary to "diffuse." The Club was to watch for the propagation of any doctrine hostile to sound views. The sect grew rapidly from the small body of Utilitarian founders, and conquered all the statesmen who rejected the other opinions of James Mill. As I tried to show, with the support of a majority of the Club, in April, 1907, the heresy of which I was elected in 1869 as a representative has now (1908) triumphed. The facts announced as "certain" by Ricardo have crumbled, and the doctrine crumbles with them. Professor Ashley declared from the Ricardo chair in 1907 that "the Ricardian orthodoxy is, by general consent, ... dead to-day among the English-speaking economists." 'The son of the Club's founder, John Stuart Mill, lived to lead the way out of the doctrine of his father, James Mill, Malthus, and Ricardo, against the opposition of his own disciple Fawcett, into the new land which he just lived to see. 'In the debates, which I regularly attended, Mill, who had become semi-socialist in his views, was usually at odds with his own disciple Fawcett, who had remained individualist. The rows which they had at this Club were carried to the Radical Club after its formation later, and I gradually deserted Fawcett, and, more and more influenced by Mill's later views, finally came to march even in front of Mill in our advance.' Sir Charles was from the first actually _in_ political life, to which Mill had come after more than half a lifetime spent in study; and experience transformed the philosopher. "The whole tone of his writings before he entered Parliament," said Sir Charles a quarter of a century afterwards, "had been marked by a vein of practical Conservatism, which entirely disappeared when he found himself in touch with the destructive realities of British politics." [Footnote: "John Stuart Mill, 1869-1873," _Cosmopolis_, March, 1897.]