it be admitted that there is much in them that is sectarian and unsound, every student must do reverent homage to his genius, his doctrine and his wonderful perspicacity. In spite of his errors, Francesco Ferrara remains the greatest Italian economist of the nineteenth century, and if his works, to which so far only a national publicity has been granted, should one day find a translator, the cosmopolitan public will gain an inexhaustible source of admiration and enjoyment in those distinguished pages, where the incisive wit of Sicily is matched in wondrous wise with the insurpassable lucidity of Britain. ACHILLE LORIA (Trans. by C. A. FOLEY.) NUMA DROZ.-The attributes of light and leading, the principles of political economy, and the power of getting them applied, were united in a rare degree by the distinguished statesman whom Switzerland has lost since last we addressed the public. Born in 1844, of humble parentage, Droz was destined to the trade of watch-making. But by means of private study he won his way to be teacher in the College of Neuenberg at a very early age. At twenty he was the editor of a liberal newspaper. Entering politics, he rose by rapid degrees to the highest positions in his country. Of his political functions the ministry of trade and agriculture was the most memorable, or at least the most deserving to be commemorated here. Droz had a hand in the making of most of the commercial treaties to which Switzerland is a party. Though a free-trader by conviction, he knew how to work with less educated compatriots. He did the best that was possible for his country under the conditions of existing prejudices. In the midst of political pre-occupations he was active as an author, witness his treatise on L'instruction civile and the Essai economique which was approvingly reviewed in the ECONOMIC JOURNAL of 1897. CURRENT TOPICS. "THE Employment of Boys or Girls without Payment Prevention Act, 1899," passed by the Legislature of New Zealand last October, provides that, "Every boy or girl under the age of eighteen years who is employed in any capacity to do any work in a factory or workroom shall be entitled to receive from the employer payment for the work at such rate as is agreed on, being in no case less than four shillings per week for girls and five shillings per week for boys irrespective of overtime." "No premium shall be paid by any such boy or girl to, or be accepted by, any factory-occupier for employment in any factory or workroom, whether such premium is paid by the boy or girl employed or by some other person; and if any factory-occupier is guilty of any breach of the provisions of this section he shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding ten pounds." We have not heard of any children losing their employment in consequence of the Act, as its opponents had prophesied. AT the Paris Exhibition, which will be open from the middle of April to the beginning of November 1900, there will be held a series of congresses, some 200 in number, among which we may notice Women's Work and Institutions, June 18th to 23rd; Agricultural Syndicates, July 8th; Credit Banks, 8th to 10th of the same month; Co-operative Production, 11th to 13th of the same month; Profit-Sharing, 15th to 18th of the same month; Distributive Societies, 15th to 17th of the month; International Co-operative Alliance, 18th to 22nd of the same month; Commerce and Industry, 23rd to 28th of the same month; Colonial Sociology, 30th July to 4th of August. A LECTURE on Internal Migration in England and Wales was given at Oxford, Feb. 3rd, by Prof. Flux of Owens College, Manchester. He pointed out that of the 632 districts, 124 only showed net influx. of population taking the sexes together, this figure being reduced to 119 for males and raised to 136 for females. The net movements within the various counties involved a transference of about 304,000 males and 350,000 females from one district to another. Measuring intensity of movement by the proportion of net migration to mean population he found that the absorption was greatest in the suburbs of London and some provincial towns and in fashionable seaside resorts. The absorption into growing industrial towns is less marked than might have been expected. MR. SAUERBECH'S Index-number representing the average prices of 45 commodities, compared with the prices of the same articles in 1867-77 was, for 1899, 68; showing a continuation of the rise which set in 1896. The figures for the last seven years are as follows: It would seem that the Index-number "touched bottom in 1896. THE 66 Clearings of the London Bankers for 1899 amounted to £9,150,000,000 (in round numbers), distancing the record for 1898 by more than a thousand million and all earlier records by a still more stupendous excess. per THE imports into the United Kingdom in 1899 amounted to £485,000,000 in round numbers, showing an excess of more than 3 cent. over 1898. But this increase was largely apparent. The increase of volume, separated from that which is due to the rise of prices by the powerful methods of the Economist, is less than the corresponding increase in the two preceding years. There has been an increase also in British exports, which, when properly connected, is found to be about 3 per cent. in volume (Economist, Jan. 20th). M. DE FOVILLE has resigned the office of Director of the Paris Mint, and has been appointed Councillor at the Court of Accounts. He is succeeded at the Mint by Professor Arnauné, the author of "La Monnaie et le Credit." IN Mr. Bonar's Catalogue of the Library of Adam Smith reference is made to a portrait of Adam Smith as having been for many years in the possession of a family named Muir, in Kirkcaldy. Mr. John H. Romanes, of 26, Frederick Street, Edinburgh, Secretary of the Scottish Society of Economists, has been obliging enough to inform us that the portrait is now in his office, and that he will be happy to show it to any of our readers who may call upon him. On the 11th October 1899, was opened at Kirkcaldy a new building in memory of Adam Smith and of Provost Beveridge of that town, including a Public Library and an Adam Smith Hall. The opening ceremony was performed by Mr. Andrew Carnegie who delivered an interesting address from which we extract the following remarks:"The American idea of what you call protection is very different from that which prevails here. Protection here has simply meant making the food of the people dearer for the advantage of those who own the land upon which the food here was grown. There was no hope of so increasing the supply of food that the consumer would soon get food cheaper that he had before. Hence the tax was not only wrong; it was foolish. Protection had to be perpetual. This was not guarding a young and tender plant; it was an attempt to plant a tree that never could grow and bear fruit. Protection in America is more in accord with Smith's words :- The recovery of a great foreign market will generally more than compensate the transitory inconvenience of paying dearer for a short time for some sorts of goods. And also with Mill's paragraph, that experiment is needed to determine whether or no a new country is best adapted to supply any article cheapest. Now the American says, if we suffer for a short time higher prices, by a duty on steel imports, for instance, our citizens will establish its manufacture, and very soon such is our supply of raw materials, we shall get our steel at home cheaper than we ever got it from abroad. He has also said so in regard to plate glass, to tin-plate, and to cotton goods, and the results has proved as expected. Had it failed he would have been wise to abolish the duty. He has followed Smith's advice and gained a new home trade, which he is rapidly making a new foreign trade in these articles. Other new nations will probably follow this example, and we must wait until it is determined by exhaustive experiment what each nation can make and furnish best for the world, and until war is replaced by arbitration; after that is done, and when new countries can collect excise taxes cheaply, I for one have no fear but that the world will adopt the policy of buying where you can cheapest and selling where you can dearest, the free and unrestricted exchange of commodities, which is the principle of him in whose honour this hall has been erected. His prophetic views are destined to prevail because they are true and best for the world, as the world is to become. His fame is to endure and make every son of Fife, and especially every native of Kirkcaldy, proud that our country gave him to mankind, and that he is one of the band of famous Scots, not small in number for so small a country, who have laid the world under lasting obligation, and helped to give Scotland its acknowledged high rank among the nations of the earth." We have received the following Notes from Mr Aves: While a nation is at war, and an Empire is discovering the reality of its existence, all sectional interests have to take their appropriately subordinate place. This is the chief explanation of the little attention that is being paid to questions that, in times of internal peace, especially if accompanied by a little social unrest and industrial depression, are apt to loom in exaggerated dimensions in the public mind. The other reason is the almost uninterrupted course of good trade that the country is enjoying. The labour chart of the Board of Trade is still an almost horizontal line, waving gently between the two and three per cent line of unemployment. It is easy to over-estimate the significance of this line, and to forget that there are whole fields of disorganised and deteriorated labour as to the conditions of which it gives little or no clue, but the fact remains that, speaking generally, trade is still extraordinarily buoyant and the demand of labour correspondingly keen. THE net gain in wages as indicated by the returns made to the Board of Trade show that the improvement of 1898 has been something more than maintained in 1899, and that something like five millions has been again added to the annual wages bill of the country. The present year has opened with the same tendency still at work; wages are still rising, and employment is still in full flood. Ir is noteworthy that at such a time, when many industries, especially those that are connected with military equipment, be it in commissariat, in clothing, in armament, or in transport, are working under great pressure, little has been heard of "labour troubles." Occasionally, demands have been made, for instance by some of the coal-porters in London, that have delayed the loading of a transport or have diverted it from its more convenient port of embarkation, but the actual dislocation in the country at large has been of trifling extent, and the admirable speed with which the material for the new Tugela bridge has been prepared may be cited as an instance of loyal responsiveness by British workmen to exacting demands that may be made upon them in a time of national need. It would, indeed be to their lasting shame if it were otherwise at a time when their brothers beyond the seas have been striving with a courage and tenacty that no one, not even the most confirmed critic, "expert" or amateur, has ventured to impugn. THE Miners' Eight Hours' Bill has been again discussed and thrown out, by a small majority, in the House of Commons, but at the moment questions of this kind that bear, or seem to bear, on the improvement of the conditions of employment, when these conditions are so favourable, are somewhat out of court. One or two questions have, however, been making themselves heard. The Report of the Royal Commission on Accidents to Railway Servants has been published and is to be followed by legislation, with the object of still further diminishing the exceptional risks to which certain branches of this class of workers are subject. THE Combined Congress of Trade Unionists and Socialists as arranged for at the last Trade Union Congress (although without the Co-operators whom it had been hoped to bring into line) has met to formulate plans for combined action in furthering the representation of Labour in the House of Commons. The Executive of the new body, which still has to be formed so far as guarantees of financial support are concerned, will consist of seven trade unionists, one member of the Fabian Society, and two each from the Independent Labour Party, and the Social Democratic Federation. This Executive will be primarily one for the selection and recommendation of parlia |