ABSTRACT
While he failed to correct McCulloch's confusion between necessary and sufficient conditions, and to grasp the latter's point about the necessity of productivity, he did draw attention to McCulloch's mutually contradictory treatment of natural agents.5 McCulloch reviewed the work in the Scotsman6 in a manner which must confirm the view that he was a very poor controversialist.7 This was not important. But when he published the first edition of his Wealth of Nations in 1828, some improvement was apparent. For although he dismissed time as unproductive, citing the case of wine which was already mature, Malthus had so far forced him to modify his position that he now attributed the increase in value following e.g. fermentation not to natural agents but to the 'amount of capital wasted' (amortization) during the process.» He was now subject to attack from another quarter, that of Samuel Read,9 but since his old enemy disavowed Bailey and claimed to be returning to Smith, his work may not have seemed very important to McCulloch.
