SKETCH OF DAVID AMES WELLS. 839 



emy, to fill the chair made vacant by the death of John Stuart Mill, and 

 also in the same year by the voting to him of the degree of D, C. L. by 

 the University of Oxford, England. The honorary degree of LL. D. 

 had been previously given to him by the college of his graduation (Will- 

 iams), and that of M. D, by the Berkshire Medical College in 1863. In 

 1873, on invitation of the Cobden Club, Mr. Wells visited England and 

 delivered the address at the annual meeting and dinner of the club. 

 In 1872 he was invited to lecture on economic subjects at Yale College. 

 In 1875 he was elected President of the Democratic State Convention 

 of Connecticut ; and he has served twice as delegate at large from Con- 

 necticut to Presidential nominating conventions, i. e., in 1872 and 1880. 

 In 1876, Mr. Wells, after refusing to accept a regular nomination for 

 Congress in the third district of Connecticut, was put upon the course 

 by resolution of the Democratic convention, with the result, in the 

 face of conditions otherwise wholly favorable to the Republicans, of 

 reducing a hitherto impregnable Republican majority from 1,176 

 to 40. 



In 1870 Mr. Wells was elected a member of the Cobden Club ; 

 in 1871, honorary member of the Royal Statistical Society of Eng- 

 land ; in 1875, President of the American Social Science Association, 

 succeeding Dr. Woolsey, of New Haven ; in 1877, a foreign associate 

 member of the Regia Academic dei Lincei, of Italy ; in 1880, Presi- 

 dent of the Xew London County (Conn.) Historical Society ; and in 

 1881, President of the American Free-Trade League. In 1878, Mr. 

 Wells was appointed by the President a member and subsequently 

 elected President of the National Board of Visitors to the United 

 States Military Academy at West Point. In 1876 he was appointed 

 by the United States court one of three trustees and receivers of 

 the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad, and in the course of the fol- 

 lowing fourteen months rescued the corporation from bankruptcy, 

 and expended a considerable sum for improvements and repairs, 

 without incurring an additional dollar of indebtedness. In 1877 he 

 was appointed by the State Board of Canal Commissioners chairman 

 of a commission to consider the subject of tolls on the Xew York 

 canals, and in the next year made an exhaustive and acceptable 

 report. 



In 1879, in connection with the late E. D. Morgan, of New York, 

 and J. Lowber Welsh, of Philadelphia, and as trustees of the bond- 

 holders, he bought under foreclosure and sale, and reorganized the New 

 York and Erie Railroad, and served for some time as a member of the 

 finance committee of the board of direction of the new company. In 

 1879 he was elected by the associated railways of the United States, in 

 connection with Charles Francis Adams, of Massachusetts, and John 

 M. Wright, of Philadelphia, a member of a board of arbitration, to 

 which the associated railroads agreed to refer all their disputes and all 

 arrangements for pooling or apportioning their respective competitive 



