I had been led in 1811 to look into
loads of books and pamphlets on many branches of economy; and, at my
desire, M. sometimes read to me chapters from more recent works, or parts
of parliamentary debates. I saw that these were generally the very dregs
and rinsings of the human intellect; and that any man of sound head, and
practised in wielding logic with a scholastic adroitness, might take up
the whole academy of modern economists, and throttle them between heaven
and earth with his finger and thumb, or bray their fungus-heads to powder
with a lady's fan. At length, in 1819, a friend in Edinburgh sent me
down Mr. Ricardo's book; and recurring to my own prophetic anticipation
of the advent of some legislator for this science, I said, before I had
finished the first chapter, "Thou art the man!" Wonder and curiosity
were emotions that had long been dead in me. Yet I wondered once more: I
wondered at myself that I could once again be stimulated to the effort of
reading, and much more I wondered at the book. Had this profound work
been really written in England during the nineteenth century? Was it
possible? I supposed thinking {19} had been extinct in England. Could
it be that an Englishman, and he not in academic bowers, but oppressed by
mercantile and senatorial cares, had accomplished what all the
universities of Europe and a century of thought had failed even to
advance by one hair's breadth? All other writers had been crushed and
overlaid by the enormous weight of facts and documents.
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