ich and those involved in the rule there is a broad line of
demarcation; as broad and _tranchant_ as the difference between Ay and
No. Very possibly, between the last case which comes within the rule and
the first of the exception, there is only the difference of a shade: but
that shade probably makes the whole interval between acting in one way
and in a totally different one. We may, therefore, in talking of art,
unobjectionably speak of the _rule_ and the _exception_; meaning by the
rule, the cases in which there exists a preponderance, however slight,
of inducements for acting in a particular way; and by the exception, the
cases in which the preponderance is on the contrary side.

THE END.

NOTES:

[8] We say, the _production_ and _distribution_, not, as is usual with
writers on this science, the production, distribution, and _consumption_.
For we contend that Political Economy, as conceived by those very
writers, has nothing to do with the consumption of wealth, further than
as the consideration of it is inseparable from that of production, or
from that of distribution. We know not of any _laws_ of the _consumption_
of wealth as the subject of a distinct science: they can be no other
than the laws of human enjoyment. Political economists have never treated
of consumption on its own account, but always for the purpose of the
inquiry in what manner different kinds of consumption affect the production
and distribution of wealth. Under the head of Consumption, in professed
treatises on the science, the following are the subjects treated of: 1st,
The distinction between _productive_ and _unproductive_ consumption; 2nd,
The inquiry whether it is possible for _too much_ wealth to be _produced_,
and for too great a portion of what has been produced to be applied to the
purpose of further _production_; 3rd, The theory of taxation, that is to
say, the following two questions--by whom each particular tax is paid
(a question of _distribution_), and in what manner particular taxes affect
_production_.

[9] The physical laws of the production of useful objects are all
equally presupposed by the science of Political Economy: most of them,
however, it presupposes in the gross, seeming to say nothing about them.
A few (such, for instance, as the decreasing ratio in which the produce
of the soil is increased by an increased application of labour) it is
obliged particularly to specify, and thus seems to borrow those truths
fro