create, had not time, or room, to occupy himself with much more than the
leading principles. When he had done enough to enable any one who came
after him, and who took the necessary pains, to do all the rest, he was
satisfied. He very rarely followed out the principles of the science
into the ramifications of their consequences. But we believe that to no
one, who has thoroughly entered into the spirit of his discoveries, will
even the minutiae of the science offer any difficulty but that which is
constituted by the necessity of patience and circumspection in tracing
principles to their results.

Mr. Ricardo, while intending to go no further into the question of the
advantage of foreign trade than to show what it consisted of, and under
what circumstances it arose, unguardedly expressed himself as if each of
the two countries making the exchange separately gained the whole of the
difference between the comparative costs of the two commodities in one
country and in the other. But, the whole gain of both countries
together, consisting in the saving of labour; and the saving of labour
being exactly equal to the difference between the costs, in the two
countries, of the one commodity as compared with the other; the two
countries taken together gain no more than this difference: and if
either country gains the whole of it, the other country derives no
advantage from the trade.

Suppose, for example, that 10 yards of broad cloth cost in England as
much labour as 15 yards of linen, and in Germany as much as 20. If
England sends 10 yards of broad cloth to Germany, and is able to
exchange them for linen according to the German cost of production, she
will get 20 yards of linen, with a quantity of labour with which she
could not have produced more than 15; and will gain, therefore, 5 yards
on every 15, or 33-1/3 per cent. But in this case Germany would obtain