ting the natural
course of rent, profit, and wages.

In 1815, Mr. Malthus in his "Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of
Rent," and a Fellow of University College, Oxford, in his "Essay on the
Application of Capital to Land," presented to the world, nearly at the
same moment, the true doctrine of rent; without a knowledge of which it
is impossible to understand the effect of the progress of wealth on
profits and wages, or to trace satisfactorily the influence of taxation
on different classes of the community, particularly when the commodities
taxed are the productions immediately derived from the surface of the
earth. Adam Smith, and the other able writers to whom I have alluded,
not having viewed correctly the principles of rent, have, it appears to
me, overlooked many important truths, which can only be discovered after
the subject of rent is thoroughly understood.

To supply this deficiency, abilities are required of a far superior cast
to any possessed by the writer of the following pages; yet after having
given to this subject his best consideration--after the aid which he has
derived from the works of the above-mentioned eminent writers--and after
the valuable experience which a few late years, abounding in facts, have
yielded to the present generation--it will not, he trusts, be deemed
presumptuous in him to state his opinions on the laws of profits and
wages, and on the operation of taxes. If the principles which he deems
correct should be found to be so, it will be for others more able than
himself to trace them to all their important consequences.

The writer, in combating received opinions, has found it necessary to
advert more particularly to those passages in the writings of Adam Smith
from which he sees reason to differ; but he hopes it will not on that
account be suspected that he does not, in common with all those who
acknowledge the importance of the science of Political Economy,
participate in the admiration which the profound work of this
celebrated author so justly excites.

The same remark may be applied to the excellent works of M. Say, who not
only was the first, or among the first, of continental writers, who
justly appreciated and applied the principles of Smith, and who has done
more than all other continental writers taken together, to recommend the
principles of that enlightened and beneficial system to the nations of
Europe; but who has succeeded in placing the science in a more logical,