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agreements, and shipping rings, patents and copyright, merchandise marks, 

 labour organisation, bankruptcy legislation, and municipal trading, I think that 

 I could probably afford you an hour's entertainment which might be both 

 interesting and instructive, but I should look forward with some misgiving to the 

 reactions of my indiscretions on the future working of the machine of which 

 I am an attendant. 



This, then, being the plight in which T find myself, my only course is to do 

 the best I can under rather unpiopitious conditions, to put before you without 

 much order or system such thoughts and ideas as occur to me with regard to 

 recent and present economic tendencies, and, if I must be indiscreet, to confine 

 my indiscretions within reasonable limits. 



But at the outset I must pause to say a word or two as to our losses during 

 the past year. Death has been unusually busy of late in the ranks of economists, 

 and hardly ahy important country has escaped its ravages. I can only mention 

 a few of the more important losses. 



To take our own country first, we are mourning the loss of the recognised 

 doyen of economic statistics. Sir Robert Giffen was unequalled in his broad 

 grasp, fine sense of proportion, and clear insight in handling masses of common 

 statistics, and in extracting from them their real significance. But he was 

 more than a statistician; his mind was extraordinarily fresh and original, and 

 there were few subjects within the range of practical economics which he touched 

 without illuminating. Of Sir Robert Giffen as an official I speak from personal 

 knowledge, for he was my first chief in the Civil Service, and I shall always 

 remember the ungrudging help and the generous support and appreciation which 

 he bestowed on his staff and colleagues. 



Looking across the sea we share the regrets of our American colleagues for 

 the loss of Simon Newcomb, a great astronomer who had also made a name among 

 economists for the freshness, vigour, and originality of his frequent incursions 

 into the domain of our science ; and also of Professor Sumner, of Yale, who 

 stood very high indeed among economic teachers. 



In Leon Walras, France has lost a distinguished economist whose most im- 

 portant work belongs to a past generation, but whose death severs one more of 

 the few remaining links with the period of the first revolt against the doctrinaire 

 successors of the classical economists. Walras was one of the early rebels, and 

 he shares with Menger and Jevons the honour of being a pioneer of the applica- 

 tion of mathematical methods to economic theory. 



Another and yet more recent loss sustained by France has been the death 

 of Emile Cheysson, distinguished both as administrator and statistician. Hip 

 work was of particular importance in those fields of social enterprise in which 

 the mathematical methods of the actuary are needed to place philanthropic effort 

 on a sound basis, and he also devoted much personal energy to the promotion of 

 schemes for social improvement. 



The untimely and almost tragic death of Ernst von Halle occurred on June 29, 

 1909, and therefore falls just outside the period of the last twelve months. But I 

 cannot pass over in silence the loss which Germany has sustained by the death of 

 this brilliant young economist and public servant. Von Halle was probably best 

 known in this country by his study of Trusts, published at a time when industrial 

 combinations were only beginning to attract the attention which has since been 

 so abundantly bestowed on them. But perhaps his most characteristic work was 

 done in connection with the maritime development of Germany, and one of his 

 latest economic writings was the essay which appeared in the ' Economic Journal ' 

 eighteen months before his death, in which he endeavoured to combat misappre- 

 hensions as to the historic basis, the objects, scope, and necessary limitations of a 

 movement which is of such profound interest to the world at the present time. 



One of the most notable losses of the year has been that of Nicholaas Gerard 

 Pierson, the economist statesman of Holland, who was not only unquestionably 

 the most distinguished of contemporary Dutch economists, but who for four years 

 (1897-1901) occupied the post of Prime Minister of his country. 



Austria mourns the loss, at the age of sixty-one. of Dr. Franz Ritter von 

 Juraschek, head of the Austrian Central Statistical Commission, whose eminent 



