Political Economy which has been erected by our school of writers, and which is now presented as a system both of national and universal action. I have shown, as I have had so often before to declare, the weak, the false, and the thoroughly bad foundation on which the Economists have erected their system. I have shown, moreover, that this school of writers stand before the world self-convicted; for, even without evidence and reasoning supplied by me, ample evidence is supplied by themselves for destroying their own system. And yet so deeply has delusion been introduced and infixed within the national mind, that this false system of Political Economy is still looked to as being the Oracular Fountain. With respect to the subject now under consideration, the history of it, as contained in the general volume of our Political Economy, is a curious history. The case stands thus:Adam Smith composed an elaborate work, for the purpose of showing those courses of social commercial action by which the wealth of nations is to be acquired. He was not able to solve the foundation proposition of the science of which he undertook to treat; namely, the Cause of Value. Having failed in this main point, he was under the necessity of raising his structure by means of conjecture, and then, by the help of a large amount of statistical compilation, and by comparative calculations on different states and conditions of trade and commerce, he at last adopted the conclusion, that free action in all the commercial dealings of men is the right and beneficial action; I say, adopted the conclusion, because it was merely matter of adoption, for he had not been able to derive, and build up, that series of evidence and reasoning which alone would have conduced to a sound conclusion.

An instance of the confused, contradictory, and false manner in which the school of Economic writers have performed their labours, is afforded by the treatment which the great subject,

Adam Smith, although

Usury, has received at their hands. contending for the principle of free action in all trade and commerce, was, nevertheless, found to oppose his adopted principle of free action in several important departments of Social and Commercial Economy. Of these departments, usury constituted one. Having given his judgment in affirmation of the law against usury, so, by this judgment, he contravened and rejected his own principle of free trade.

In the unsatisfactory, nescientific, and bad condition just described, Bentham found the subject when he entered the field of science and of controversy; but Bentham did not choose to leave the subject in a condition so discreditable to science. He resolved on placing the subject, at all events, in a straight course. For this purpose, declining the task of entering upon that masterly examination of Adam Smith's work which he ought to have undertaken and to have accomplished --- for this examination was due from him before he ventured to treat of the important subject of usury—he chose, like so many other men, the more easy course of adopting Adam Smith's conclusion of free trade, without due examination of the course of reasoning by which the conclusion had been derived; and then, taking this position as a position undeniable and granted, he proceeded, as he has so cleverly described, to beat his master, Adam Smith, with weapons furnished by himself, that is, by Adam Smith, his master - to whom, he declared, he was indebted for whatever knowledge he had acquired of the general subject. Bentham's argument, then, stands as follows:-If the principle of free commercial action be the true social and sustaining principle, and I am so satisfied with Adam Smith's manner of treating the subject that I receive the free principle as true laws against usury, which are laws in contravention of free commercial action, must be false, for the subjects involve one and the same principle of action. This,

in the sphere of the schools, is called logic, and good logic it is. But a philosophical inquirer must not permit such logic to pass into the province of truth. He is bound to take a larger view, a view that shall comprehend the whole subject-matter involved, as well as that matter which is advanced by scientific investigators, as a treatment of the subjects. It is his province to examine, not only Bentham's corollary on Adam Smith's conclusion, but to examine Adam Smith's whole course of evidence, reasoning, and argument, for upon these it is that Bentham has admitted his argument in correction to be founded. When this has been faithfully accomplished, the falseness of the assumed premises, of the assumed inductions, and of the assumed conclusion, is discovered, and by this discovery the whole of the reared and extolled fabric of Political Economy falls; whatever elements of truth and value may have been incorporated with it, being left to be ascertained by a due examination of the large mass of loose and disjoined fragments.

Such as I have now described, is the unbecoming position in which Adam Smith, and after him the whole modern school of Economic writers, and then their received hero of Social and Economic Science, Bentham, are placed. The attack made by Bentham on the Usury Laws, and on the social principle upon which laws against usury are founded, is denominated by those who, with so much assurance and misplaced confidence, have become his disciples, a complete " onslaught," - an onslaught from which recovery is not possible. Probably the whole history of that which is denominated "Philosophy" will not supply us with a more remarkable instance of self-sufficiency and self-delusion than is here supplied. And yet this Political Economy it is which all our enlightened - enlightened!!-men extol and glorify. It is at the altar of this bad and false Political Economy,

that divine and revealed truth, being first denounced and contemned, is sacrificed; the nation, as a nation, and by means of its legislature, as well as by the spirit of the people in general, looking on and applauding.

Thus, proof is afforded of the prevalence of that infidelity which I have had to allege. Not one man, in either House of Parliament, has been found who has been able to raise his voice with any knowledge or power against the course which I have described. The school of free actors, composed, as I have shown this school to be, of mere sciolists, or, of men, who, having been unable to construct a solid foundation within the province of science, whose chief element has been an admiration and worship of themselves, and of the false and injurious principles and courses invented by themselves, who have ridiculed, opposed, and rejected, the divinely-communicated or revealed principles of social truth, have been allowed to acquire a complete triumph, in the arena of our legislatorial discussions. In the sphere of our literature, a like scene has been enacted. The spirit of free action, having risen with power in the University of Glasgow, was there received, worshipped, and glorified. Following upon this effort and reception, all who have become active and influential spirits in the extensive field of Political Economy have joined in the extollation of the free spirit and principle. Our University men, in general, men who have professed professed to be Theologians, that is, faithful followers, advocates, and defenders of the divine word or truth, have either slunk away in idleness, in fear, or in apprehension, from the great encounter with the enemies of truth; or else have become recreants and deserters, and in order to be with the world, to propitiate the spirit of the world, have lent themselves to an advocacy and pursuit of those courses which, by an almost universal acclamation, have been called popular.

If evidence, amounting to proof, were wanting, showing the defective, false, and bad condition in which our writers on Political Economy have placed the science before the world, this evidence is afforded by a large and important array of witnesses who were examined, lately, before a Committee of the House of Commons, on the great and difficult subject of the policy by which our monetary system had been, and ought to be, directed in connection with the action which the Bank of England exercises over the working of the national capital. Besides a few men who had considered and dealt with the subjects theoretically, the witnesses consisted of several of our best informed, most honourable, and most practical, bankers and merchants. The issue of the whole evidence was that of establishing the fact of the lamentable want of knowledge that prevails on the science of Political Economy. The main inquiry was directed, of course, to a discovery and a clear exposition of the causes which operate in our commercial dealing and system, so as to bring about the derangements and convulsions of commerce, or those panics, by which so many men are injured, and so many brought to ruin, by which so much of the national capital is destroyed, and, consequently, by which so many families of our labouring population are brought to that condition of poverty and destitution from which they cannot again rise. On the question of the foundation and policy of Usury Laws, the most observing, the most experienced, and the most solidly thinking, of the witnesses connected with the government of the Bank of England, as well as those witnesses connected with general money transactions and commerce, contributed evidence by which the necessity and value of laws that may check, and in some measure regulate, the use and application of money, are shown. By the evidence delivered it is proved, that by the assistance which these laws afford,