and sincere conviction, whether right or wrong is another question, that governments generally are founded on principles directly in opposition with the natural progress of civilization.) I trust our countrymen are now much too liberal and enlightened to be offended with the honest expression of such an opinion: I do not court either persecution or martyrdom for my political faith, if there be now any men so attached to existing systems, as to think that he who does not believe in their efficacy ought to be hanged or burned; and it is only under the confident assurance that no man by our liberal countrymen, and under a soi-disant liberal government, will be persecuted on account of opinions, that I venture to place your respected and honoured name at the head of some that are at variance, I am afraid, with the political creed of the great majority of

men.

I am, my Dear Sir,

With the most unfeigned respect,

Your obliged and obedient Servant,
THOMAS HODGSKIN.

Pentonville, April 19, 1827.

PREFACE.

THIS book not being exactly a transcript of the Lectures delivered by the author at the London Mechanics Institution in 1826, he thinks it is right to point out in what respects it resembles or differs from them. The first lecture, on THE INFLUENCE OF KNOWLEDGE, consisted of the second, and part of the third chapters of the present work, with one or two passages of the Introduction. The second lecture, on DIVISION OF LABOUR, is here transformed into the fourth, fifth, and sixth chapters. The seventh chapter, on TRADE, formed the third lecture; and the chapters on MONEY and PRICES contain the substance of the fourth lecture. The greater part of the Introduction, and of the third chapter, with the first and tenth chapters, formed no part of the Lectures. Some few passages, alluding to events connected with the Institution, have been sup

pressed, though with some pain to the author, because they were appropriate only when mentioned in the presence of those who could judge of their correctness. Many passages also have been added, even in those chapters which are most literally a transcript of the Lectures. To those who did not hear them, the view here taken of PRODUCTION will probably appear to have some little novelty in it; and those who did, should they look into the book from the expectation of finding something to read more than they heard, will not be disappointed.

Some of the added passages may appear unsuitable to the mixed and popular assembly in which the Lectures were delivered; and on account of them, those persons who have assumed the guardianship of the national intellect, carefully shielding it from the contamination of philosophy, and drilling it into servile obedience to human institutions, the only proper objects, in their opinions, of worship and veneration, will be prone to condemn the managers of the Institution for allowing the Lectures to be delivered. The author being willing to bear all the blame that may belong to such passages, and being anxious to guard the Institution against the possibility of its being misrepresented, regrets very much that he is unable to designate them,-they have become by revision so blended with the original matter,-or

he should have thought it due to those gentlemen, to mark in the following pages, as is done by plays, the passages omitted in the representation.

The term POPULAR is not used in the Title from a notion that the thorny discussions of Political Economy are made amusing, and that its abstract doctrines have been reduced to light reading; but from a notion that the principles here expounded are more agreeable to popular prejudices than those which have been made prevalent, though still unpopular, by the writings of Mr. Malthus. Our feelings are hostile to his theory; and without pretending to controvert it, the Author has endeavoured to show, that the true principles of production justify the prejudices of mankind, and strengthen that confidence the most enlightened of our species were most disposed, prior to the unhappy celebrity obtained by THE ESSAY ON THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION, to place in the wisdom and goodness of that Power, which sustains, informs, and regulates the moral as well as the material world.

Though popular in this sense, the book makes no pretensions to be what is called practical. The author is even afraid that its principles may be regarded as more remote from the business of life than those of most treatises on Political Economy. He discusses none of the subjects on which the people are in the habit of petitioning Parlia