TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 161 
gation current among economists were utterly repugnant to the fundamental prin- 
ciples of natural philosophy. 
It was already implicitly acknowledged that it was a mathematical science. In 
any book of Algebra it was said that money was a positive quantity, and debts 
negative quantities. Hach were exchangeable, and therefore economic quantities, 
Here, therefore, were positive economic quantities and negative economic quantities. 
Now mathematicians had fully explained the meaning of negative quantities and 
the use of the negative sign in the various physical sciences, but no mathema- 
tician had explained the meaning of negative economic quantities and the theory 
of the negative sign in political economy. Nevertheless it was of the highest im- 
portance to do so. Under the simple fact remarked by algebraists that debts were 
negative quantities, there lay hid a new and magnificent branch of economical 
analysis, which contained the solution of the theory of credit, and all other incor- 
poreal property, which constituted at least 95 per cent. of valuable property, which 
was wholly omitted from economic works. 
Adopting the conception of exchanges, a great new physical science was pre- 
sented to us, fitted to be raised to the rank of an exact science; for it was found 
that the laws of exchange were absolutely the same in all ages and countries. 
Economic science could therefore be raised to the rank of an exact science, because 
it was based upon principles of human nature as permanent and universal as those of 
physical substances upon which the physical sciences were based. 
On the Utility of Colonization. By Herman Merivate. 
The author drew a distinction between the benefits of colonization, which for 
his purpose he assumed to be admitted, and those of retaining the government of 
colonies after they had become settled communities. As to the latter, he observed 
that the following was the simplest mode of stating the question. How far is the 
profitable App eae of the accumulated knowledge, capital, and labour of an old 
country to the production of wealth in a new country aided by the circumstance 
that both are under the same government? But passing over at present the 
general problem, he confined himself to a single portion of it, namely, how far the 
advantage which we derive from emigration as an outlet to our people might be 
affected by any political change involving the loss of our colonial empire. 
He then entered on a variety of statistical details to show that the peculiar 
advantage of emigration, as now carried on, consisted not only in its extent, but in 
the regular manner in which it controlled the progress of population. He showed 
that since the year 1845, when the potato-disease commenced, the increase of 
population in the United Kingdom, taken together, had been scarcely greater than 
in France during the same period. In England and Wales however, taken alone, 
the natural increase had been about 10 per cent., in France about 4 per cent. only. 
And yet, in the same period, England and Wales had probably sent out a million 
of emigrants, France none (that is, the immigration into that country nearly 
balanced the emigration). In the same period, in England and Wales, the following 
circumstances had coincided :—large emigration, increase of the number of births, 
increase of the number of marriages, with no diminution in the average length of 
life, indicating no diminution in the comfort of the people. Emigration has pro- 
vided for about one child in six, and thereby enabled the people of England to 
an as early as before, and to have as many children, without any pressure of our 
population indicated by decline in the national well-being. In France, the same 
period exhibited these facts :—no emigration, a due relative increase in the number 
of marriages, no diminution in the public well-being, as indicated by mortality, 
but rather an increase. The inevitable consequence which these facts indicated 
was, as the author observed, that there must have been a diminution in the num- 
ber of births to a marriage. And this was completely borne out by the facts. The 
annual number of births remained absolutely stationary throughout the period, 
The ratio of births to a marriage was continually diminishing (from 1822 to 1831, 
3°64—now about 3). Marriages were less productive, either from being contracted 
later or from other causes; and the progress of population was, in our country, in 
a more normal and healthy condition, owing to the resource which emigration 
afforded. 
1862, 11 
