For this reason, practical
industry never can admit of Sisyphism. The error is too quickly
followed by its punishment to remain concealed. But in the speculative
industry of theorists and statesmen, a false principle may be for a
long time followed up, before the complication of its consequences,
only half understood, can prove its falsity; and even when all is
revealed, the opposite principle is acted upon, self is contradicted,
and justification sought, in the incomparably absurd modern axiom,
that in political economy there is no principle universally true.
Let us see, then, if the two opposite principles I have laid down do
not predominate, each in its turn; the one in practical industry, the
other in industrial legislation. When a man prefers a good plough to a
bad one; when he improves the quality of his manures; when, to loosen
his soil, he substitutes as much as possible the action of the
atmosphere for that of the hoe or the harrow; when he calls to his aid
every improvement that science and experience have revealed, he has,
and can have, but one object, viz.
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