854. REPORT— 1900. 



trade of each year as ascertained and comparing it with the Official Value, which 

 expressed its value at the prices fixed for the year 1827. From 1862 onwards 

 these Official Values are not recorded, hut in each year the trade is first valued at 

 the prices of the preceding year, and, later, a revised valuation, at the prices of the 

 year itself, is supplied. Thus the price-movements were traced from 1847 to 1878.^ 

 I'he paper continues the latter series of comparisons to 1898. Taking the price- 

 level of 1862 as 100, the lowest level subsequently reached was in 1897, when 

 imports reached 57'2 and exports 57'6. In 1898, neglecting fractions, the level 

 of price for both imports and exports was 58. In the interval the fall of price- 

 level for exports was almost unbroken, the elevations of 1864, 1872, 1880, and 

 1890 being comparatively slight. In the case of imports there was a considerable 

 and sharp rise from 1869 to 1872, after which the course of the movement has 

 been similar to that of exports, but so much more rapid has been the decline as to 

 bring the figures for both sections of trade to approximately the same level in the 

 last few years. 



The piecing together of a record of price-movement before and after 1862 as 

 ascertained by two different methods gives interest to the comparison of the 

 measures of the movement from 1887 to 1896 by each of these two methods. The 

 Tableau Decennalior 1887 to 1896 supplies a valuation of the trade of each year at 

 1896 prices. The two measures of price-movement give substantially the same 

 results except in the years most removed from the year with which comparison is 

 made. The fall of price is greater for exports, less for imports, from 1887 to 1896 

 as measured by direct evaluation of the trade of each year at the prices of 1896 than 

 as measured by the index of price-movement previously obtained. The greatest 

 difference shown falls short of 3 per cent. It is possible that, just as a divergence 

 between the course of price-movement of imports and exports up to 1872 did not 

 prevent the substantial identity of price-change in both over the period 1862 to 

 1898, so the divergence shown over a ten-year period, in the two measures of 

 price-movement, is no proof that, could the same method have been used for 

 tracing price-change from 1827 to 1898, instead of two methods linked together at 

 the date of passing from one to the other, the indication of change of price-level 

 over the whole period would have differed substantially from that actually 

 obtained. 



It is interesting to note that the diflerence of price-level in the early sixties and 

 the late nineties as shown by Sauerbeck's Index Number is not far from the same 

 as that ascertained by the methods used in the paper for French foreign trade. 



' Cf. Journal of the Royal Slatistical Society, December 1879. 



