[259] Ibid., p. 21. Later on he employs the more comprehensive term “natural agents.”
[260] Traité, 1803 ed., Book I, chaps. 42 and 43. By “industry” Say understands every kind of labour. Cf. 6th ed., pp. 70 et seq.
[261] Malthus still appeared hostile to the doctrine of immaterial products, but Lauderdale, Tooke, McCulloch, and Senior accepted it, and it seemed definitely fixed when Stuart Mill confined the word “product” to material products only. For Tooke’s view see his letter to J. B. Say in the Œuvres diverses of the latter.
[262] Traité, Book I, chap. 2. Is it not strange that Say should have failed to apply this idea to commerce? He regards the latter as productive because it creates exchangeable values. Nevertheless he criticises Condillac for having said that mere exchange of goods increases wealth because it increases the utility of objects. This is because Say is perpetually mixing up utility and exchange value, a confusion that leads him into many serious mistakes.
[263] Traité, 6th ed., p. 6. The word “laws” does not appear in the first edition. Say merely speaks of general principles. It is found for the first time in the edition of 1814: “General facts or, if one wishes to call principles by that name, general laws” (p. xxix).
[264] Correspondence with Malthus, in Œuvres diverses, p. 466.
[265] Traité, Introd., 1st ed., p. ix; 6th ed., p. 13.
[266] Ibid., 1st ed., Book I, p. 404.
[267] There is no need for exaggeration, however, and no need to regard Say as totally indifferent to suffering and misery. He declares, e.g., that “for many homes both in town and country life is one long privation,” and that thrift in general “implies, not the curtailment of useless commodities, such as expediency and humanity would welcome, but a diminution of the real needs of life, which is a standing condemnation of the economic system of many Governments.” (Traité, 1st ed., vol. i, pp. 97-98; 6th ed., p. 116.)
[268] Traité, 6th ed., p. 403.