retorted on him his own term of the real interest, which might be a very opposite one, according to their notions! It has been said, with what truth I know not, that it was by a mere confusion of words that Burke was enabled to alarm the great Whig families, by showing them their fate in that of the French noblesse; they were misled by the similitude of names. The French noblesse had as little resemblance with our nobility, as they have to the Mandarins of China. However it may be in this case, certain it is, that the same terms misapplied, have often raised those delusive notions termed false analogies. It was long imagined in this country, that the parliaments of France were somewhat akin to our own; but these assemblies were very differently constituted, consisting only of lawyers in courts of law. A misnomer confuses all argu

ment.

There is a trick which consists in bestowing good names on bad things. Vices, thus veiled, are introduced to us as virtues, according to an old poet,

"As drunkenness, good-fellowship we call!"

SIR THOMAS WIAT,

Or the reverse, when loyalty may be ridiculed as "The right divine of kings-to govern wrong!"

The most innocent, recreations, such as the drama, dancing, dress, have been anathematised by puritans, while philosophers have written elaborate treatises in their defence-the enigma is solved, 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 heir-loom 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 66 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;" this I leave to the ablest judge, Mr. Ricardo, to decide in a commentary on Adam Smith, if he will devote his patriotism and his genius to so excellent a labour*. 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 "con. fusion of words," and leave this blessed inheritance to our sons, if ever the science survives the logomachy.

Caramuel, a famous Spanish bishop, was a grand ARCHITECT OF WORDS. Ingenious in theory, his errors were confined to his practice: he said a great deal and meant nothing; and by an exact dimension of his intellect, taken at the

Since the former edition of this work, the lamented death of Mr. Ricardo has occurred-and we have lost the labours of a mind of great simplicity and native power, at, perhaps, the hour of its maturity.

time, it appeared that he had genius in the eighth degree, eloquence in the fifth, but judgment only in the second!" This great man would not read the ancients; for he had a notion that the moderns must have acquired all they possessed, with a good deal of their own "into the bargain." Two hundred and sixty-two works, differing in breadth and length, besides his manuscripts, attest, that if the world would read his writings, they could need no other; for which purpose his last work always referred to the preceding ones, and could never be comprehended till his readers possessed those which were to follow. As he had the good sense to perceive that metaphysicians abound in obscure and equivocal terms, to avoid this "confusion of words," he invented a jargon of his own; and to make "confusion worse confounded," projected grammars and vocabularies by which we were to learn it; but it is supposed that he was the only man who understood himself. He put every author in despair by the works which he announced. This famous ARCHITECT OF WORDS, however, built more labyrinths than he could