The inescapable abstraction of economic analysis has indeed caused political 
economy and economics to become "an arcane discipline for quite a long 
time".  In 1832 the Eclectic Review could remind its readers that the work 
of Malthus and Ricardo "had tended to lead the public far away from the true 
path of inquiry", and to make of political economy "a hideous chain of 
paradoxes at apparent war with religion and humanity."

Anthony Waterman