462 EEPOBT— 1889. 



In conclusion I have to express my thanks to M. Victor Popp and 

 to the directors and officials of the Paris Compressed Air Company for 

 not only giving me permission to make the experiments of which I have 

 laid some results before you, but also for taking much trouble to afford 

 me every facility for making a thorough investigation of the matter upon 

 the lines which I had myself laid down as those along which I proposed 

 to work. I think it is not too much to say that as the result of this I 

 have had the good fortune to be able to make a more detailed and 

 complete evaluation of all the efficiencies which together make (or mar) 

 the efficiency of a complete transmission system than has ever been made 

 before. I shall be very glad if my experiments prove in any way useful 

 to those who in futare may have to do with the carrying out of power 

 transmission by compressed air in this country or elsewhere. 



The Gomtist Criticism of Economic Science. 

 By W. Cunningham, D.D., D.Sc. 



[A commtinication ordered, to be printed in exteiiso among the Keports.] 



I. Conflicting Opinions and Possible Eeconciliation. 

 II. Types of Economic Organism : the Family, Village, City, Nation. 



1. Later Tyjaes most efEective and important. 



2. Early Types as survivals. 



3. The Economic Man relative to the Organism. 



III. Economic Conceptions, formed by reflection on Economic Phenomena. 



1. The Imijortance of Definition. 



2. Economic History as propaedeutic to Political Economy. 



IV. The Investigation of Economic Phenomena. 



1. Accurate Description. 



2. Explanation. 



(a) Difficulty of Interpretation. 



(6) Free Competition assumed for the purposes of Investigation. 



I. 



That political economy has fallen somewhat into discredit in recent years is 

 a fact which must be admitted, and which we shall do well to face. Perhaps 

 it may be' partly due to the disputes among leading economists as to the 

 scope of the study ; each professes to provide the genuine article, and 

 issues warnings against the exponents of science falsely so called. If 

 we look to the two ancient Universities, we find that Oxford declares that 

 the Ricardian economist has ' constantly exalted into the domain of 

 natural law what is after all and at the best a very dubious tendency, and 

 may be a perfectly baseless hypothesis ' ; ' while Cambridge exposes the 

 mistakes which have been made by the ' extreme wing ^ of the modem 

 real or historic school of economists,' and asserts that the 'most reckless and 

 ti'eachei'ous of all theorists is he who professes to let facts and figures 

 speak for themselves.' ^ If we turn to the dicta of the accredited repre- 



1 Thorold Kogers, Eeononie Interpretation, 7. 



^ Marshall, Present Position, 39. 



^ Tbid., 44. At Professor Marshall's request, I give the sentence in full. ' Expe- 

 rience in controversies such as these brings out the impossibility of learning anything 

 from facts till they are examined and interpreted by reason ; and teaches that the 



