universally, and even by those who declaim against it, considered as a good.

After all, indeed, in regard to wealth, as well as all those objects which the great moralist of antiquity places in the class of things good in themselves, (anλäç ayatà,) more depends, as he himself remarks, on the use we make of these bounties of Providence than on the advantages themselves. But they are in themselves food; and it is our part, instead of affecting ungratefully to slight or to complain of God's gifts, to endeavour to make them goods to us, (hμïv åyalà,) by studying to use them aright, and to promote, through them, the best interests of ourselves and our fellow-creatures.

I shall hereafter, when I come to treat of Political-Economy as connected with NaturalTheology, enter rather more fully into the consideration of the effects on society which have been produced, and of those which we may conclude were designed to be produced, by the progress of wealth; and also of the causes by which that progress, as well as the several effects of it, have been modified, promoted, or impeded.

In my next Lecture, however, I shall be compelled to occupy your time with the notice of some of the mistakes that prevail respecting the study itself of Political-Economy, distinct from those relating to wealth which is the subject of it; and to the objections that have in consequence been raised, not against the pursuit of national wealth, but against the scientific contemplation of the subject.

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LECTURE III.

SUPPOSING Wealth to be naturally, and consequently to have always been, an object of sufficiently strong desire to mankind, what need can there be, it may be said, to construct a Science, and an Art founded on that Science, relative to the subject? In a matter about which daily practice and daily observation are concerned, and have been, for so many ages, must not the common sense of judicious men, and the experience of practical men, be preferable to the subtle systems of theoretical speculators?

Some again there are, who are far from regarding with disdain the systematic study of the theory of wealth, who yet have no idea of reckoning it an important part of general education; but as one necessary, perhaps, or useful, to those at the head of public affairs; and to any others, a matter of mere curious speculation.

With respect to the prevailing fallacies connected with the term Common-sense, I have elsewhere remarked, that all who employ it with any distinct meaning, intend to denote by it "an exercise of the judgment unaided by any art or system of rules; such as we must necessarily employ in numberless cases of daily occurrence; in which, having no established principles to guide us-no line of procedure, as it were, distinctly chalked out-we must needs act on the best extemporaneous conjectures we can form. He who is eminently skilful in doing this, is said to possess a superior degree of common-sense. But that common-sense is only our second-best guide-that the rules of art, if judiciously framed, are always desirable when they can be had, is an assertion, for the truth of which I may appeal to the testimony of mankind in general; which is so much the more valuable, inasmuch as it may be accounted the testimony of adversaries. For the generality have a strong predilection in favour of commonsense, except in those points in which they, respectively, possess the knowledge of a system of rules; but in these points they deride any