OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ECONOMY OR THE LAWS OF THE CREATION AND DIFFUSION OF WEALTH INVESTIGATED AND EXPLAINED. PRECEDED BY AN EXAMINATION OF THE EXTANT AND PREVAILING PRINCIPLES AND SYSTEM OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. BY WILLIAM ATKINSON. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the OLD TESTAMENT and NEW TESTAMENT. Quæ homines arant, navigant, ædificant, virtuti omnia parent. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. SALLUST. LONDON LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, LONGMANS, AND ROBERTS. ADVERTISEMENT. HAVING discovered, many years ago, the main principle of Social and Political Economy that is contained in the following work, and that is upheld throughout it, and having, by the light of this principle, discovered also the very defective manner in which the science of Political Economy has been treated, I published a short elementary treatise upon the science, with the view of submitting both the matter of truth, and the matter of error, thus discovered, to the judgment of those who should be engaged in the investigation of Political Economy as a serious study. I now publish the first volume of my work in an enlarged or completed form. I wish that I could have avoided extending the matter of this volume to the length which it occupies. If, indeed, it had been necessary to treat only of the simple and strong truth of the science, brevity might |