Note 264-2 — Chapter III

Remarkable controversy[TN 121] between Hume and Tucker. The former had charged the latter with holding the opinion that industry and wealth must necessarily continue to advance indefinitely; and yet all things had in them the germs of decay. Tucker, on the other hand, remarked that all he wished to say was that no one could point out where progress must necessarily cease. All political bodies like all natural bodies might decay; but it is not necessary that they should. With good laws and morality they would become more vigorous with increasing age. A great deal depended here on the more general distribution of property, on the assurance that industry would meet with its reward, and on the removal of the principal defects in the English electoral system. (Four Tracts, 477 seq. Two Sermons, 30.) Most political economists are of the same opinion; thus McCulloch, Principles, II, 3. See, however, the last two sections in Ferguson, History of civil Society.