, when we
discover that these words suggested a set of opposite notions to each.

But the nominalists and the realists, and the _doctores fundatissimi_,
_resolutissimi_, _refulgentes_, _profundi_, and _extatici_, have left
this heirloom of logomachy to a race as subtle and irrefragable! An
extraordinary scene has recently been performed by a new company of
actors, in the modern comedy of Political Economy; and the whole
dialogue has been carried on in an inimitable "confusion of words!" This
reasoning and unreasoning fraternity never use a term as a term, but for
an explanation, and which employed by them all, signifies opposite
things, but never the plainest! Is it not, therefore, strange that they
cannot yet tell us what are _riches_? what is _rent_? what is _value_?
Monsieur Say, the most sparkling of them all, assures us that the
English writers are obscure, by their confounding, like Smith, the
denomination of _labour_. The vivacious Gaul cries out to the grave
Briton, Mr. Malthus, "If I consent to employ your word _labour_, you
must understand me," so and so! Mr. Malthus says, "Commodities are not
exchanged for commodities only; they are also exchanged for _labour_;"
and when the hypochondriac Englishman, with dismay, foresees "the glut
of markets," and concludes that we may produce more than we can consume,
the paradoxical Monsieur Say discovers that "commodities" is a _wrong
word_, for it gives a wrong idea; it should be "productions;" for his
axiom is, that "productions can only be purchased with productions."
Money, it seems, according to dictionary ideas, has no existence in his
vocabulary; for Monsieur Say has formed a sort of Berkleian conception
of wealth being immaterial, while we confine our views to its
materiality. Hence ensues from this "confusion of words," this most
brilliant paradox,--that "a glutted market is not a proof that we
produce _too much_ but that we produce _too little_! for in that case
there is not enough produced to exchange with what is produced!" As
Frenchmen excel in politeness and impudence, Monsieur Say adds, "I
revere Adam Smith; he is my master; but this first of political
economists did not understand all the phenomena of production and
consumption." We, who remain uninitiated in this mystery of explaining
the operations of trade by metaphysical ideas, and raising up theories
to conduct those who never theorise, can only start at the "confusion of
words," and leave this blesse