DEMOCRACY AND THE VOICE OF HISTORY. 885 
possible to adduce any legitimate conclusion with regard to the 
modern problems of capital and democracy. Apart from the 
utility of historical study as a means of throwing light upon par- 
ticular problems, there was its undoubted value as a mental and 
moral training. Looked at from this point of view, history offered 
a singularly powerful remedy for some of the most serious evils 
of democratic government. Intellectually, it contributed a know- 
ledge of social laws and a mental discipline of peculiar value to 
the political student. Morally, it might go far to lessen the evils 
of popular indifference, the dogmatism which resulted from a 
restricted vision or a deficient political sympathy, and that unap- 
preciation of the claims of superior merit, which was so largely 
responsible for present standards of legislation. 
No. 2.—THE PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF 
ECONOMICS. 
(Tllustrated by Diagrams.) 
By Aurrep De Lissa. 
(Read Tuesday, 11 January, 1898.) 
[ Abstract, omitting Diagrams. | 
Ir political economy is to be of any material service, it should, 
where possible to do so, establish, as in other sciences, a theory, 
or at least a working hypothesis, as the basis of deduction ; and 
also of such action as can be taken to carry out the objects with 
which the science is concerned. Until this is accomplished there 
can be no material progress. There was none in chemistry until 
the discovery by Dalton of the atomic theory, deduced from the 
observation of chemical combination in multiple proportions ; nor 
in astronomy, until the discovery of Newton’s theory of gravita- 
tion, the basis of the science. 
In my paper on the Organisation of Industry, read at the 
Hobart meeting of this Association in the year 1892, published 
in extenso in the volume of proceedings for that year, I presented 
the indication of a law, ascertained for the English speaking 
countries, for which statistics were available, and its further 
consideration has led me to some very definite results. 
I stated that law, as it then occurred to me to formulate it, to 
be, that the expenditure in any one of those countries of the 
