TRANSACTIONS OF SKCTION F. 



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Thesa remarks have reference to the fifth year succeeding; 1883. If the calcu- 

 lations be carried back for five years preceding- the one -which happens to have 

 been taken as the standard one, because it was the latest available for the Aberdeen 

 meeting, we get the full period of eleven years, which is by some supposed to be 

 a cycle in commercial history. The following table ranges side by side the several 

 inde.K-uumbers for each year of both imports and exports, and in each of these for 

 volume as well as value. Interposed between them are the value indices for the 

 goods which, having been imported, were again sent away. These might have been 

 either deducted from the imports or added to the exports, for they belong to the 

 one as well as to the other, but the classification of the several articles adopted in 

 the Official Trade Returns, from which the figures are derived, is not amenable to 

 this treatment, and therefore the value index can alone be given. This, however, 

 will serve to represent in value the relative extent of the re-export trade, and that 

 of its volume would probably incline more towards that of the imports than to 

 that of the British exports. By a deduction from the imports the value of those 

 wliich are retained for home consumption or manufacture may be obtained. 



Table of Index-nuinhers, of both Value and Volume, for each year 1878-1888, 

 inclusive, 1,000 beiny equivalent to 240,000,000/. 



It will be noticed that for the first period of five years the volume fell short of 

 the value as compared with 1883, and that in the later period the volume exceeded 

 the value. The year 1883 thus marks a transition point when prices generally 

 began to decline. 



It is this power which the index-figures confer of comparing one period with 

 another, and the one side of our trade, its incomings with its outgoings, which seems 

 to render a simple and uniform system of some value. When reduced to a visible 

 expression, as in the diagram attached to the Statistical Society's paper, a glance 

 suffices to show, not only the difl^erences between the values of the imports and the 

 exports, but their respective bulks as well. There is then prominently brought to 

 view the fact of our exports moving progressively, increased in volume more than 

 in value up to the present time. Consequently, with this the imports must likewise 

 grow in bulk in a still greater proportion. 



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