PREFACE. OUR writers on Political Economy are all agreed in admitting, that the acquirement of just views of value is an indispensable preliminary to a right understanding of nearly every other subject connected with the science. My first object in this work is to show that all these gentlemen have failed to acquire this preliminary knowledge, and have, in consequence, fallen into a long succession of serious mistakes. I was in the midst of a work embracing all the principal questions in Political Economy, when the depression of our trade, the condition of our working classes, and the impatience of our northern manufacturers for free trade, induced me to divide my work into two parts, in order to publish one immediately in which the question about to come before parliament might be discussed. In taking this course, I have been obliged to keep back much of that evidence which shows how little those who have written on Political Economy |