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4. That Mr. Ricardo's doctrine that the rate of profits can never be increased but by a fall in wages '—and is never increased by a better distribution of labour, by the invention of machinery, by the establishment of roads or canals, or by any means of abridging labour either in the manufacture or in the conveyance of goods'-is erroneous. Mr. Mill made an important correction of his predecessor's language in saying that the rate of profit depends, not on wages but on the cost of labour. Yet the cost of labour is only one of several conditions affecting the result.

The author is under much obligation to Mr. Ingram, F.T.C.D., Secretary of the Dublin University Press Series Committee, for aid in reading and correcting proofs.

21, DELAHAY-STREET, STOREY's Gate,

LONDON, S.W., May, 1879.

T. E. C. LESLIE.

Ricardo's Works, M'Culloch's Ed., p. 75.

ESSAYS

IN

POLITICAL AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY.

I.

THE LOVE OF MONEY.*

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THE Love of Money has always been in more or less disrepute with moralists. They have almost universally assigned to it nearly the lowest place in the scale of human affections. We say of human affections, for it is one which distinguishes man from all other animals, however intelligent. 'You call me dog,' said Shylock to the Christian merchant; hath a dog money?' Phrenologists have indeed laid down that all the propensities-combativeness, destructiveness, philoprogenitiveness, alimentiveness, love of life, &c.—are common to man with the lower animals; ' but we are surprised that they have not discovered a peculiar protuberance on the outside of the human head corresponding with a peculiar propensity for money inside it. It is the more to be regretted that they have not ascertained the locality of this organ, since a claim has been set up on behalf of the lower animals to a close relationship to the human family. If a bump of philargyriveness or philonomismativeness could be shown on the human head, a conspicuous absence of this manifestation on the cranium of the former would enable us to disprove the connection, to the satisfaction at least of believers in phrenology. It would not, however, enable us, without further inquiry, to determine whether

This Essay was published in November, 1862, in a periodical which has ceased to exist.

B

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