TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 867 
Section F.—ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS. 
PRESIDENT OF THE Section.—The Right Hon. Leonarp Courtney, M.A., M.P, 
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17. 
The following Address by the PResIDENT was read by Professor Gonner :— 
WHEN the British Association revisits a town or city, it is the laudable custom 
of the President of a Section to refer to what was said by his predecessor in the 
same chair on the former occasion. -I should in any case be disposed to follow this 
practice, but I could not choose to do otherwise when I find it was my honoured 
friend Professor Jevyons who occupied this place in Liverpool in 1870. He was 
one of a group which passed away in quick succession, to the great loss of the study 
of Economics in this country, since each had much premise of further usefulness, and 
left us with labours unfulfilled. Bagehot, Cairnes, Cliffe Leslie, Fawcett, Jevons, 
occupied a large space in the field of economic study, and no one among them 
excelled Professor Jevons in the vigour and clearness of his analysis or in the sin- 
cerity and range of his speculations. His first work which arrested public attention 
was perhaps not so much understood as misunderstood. This busy, bustling, hurrying 
world cannot afford time to pause and examine the consecutive stages of a drawn- 
out argument, and too many caught up and repeated to one another the notion that 
Jevons predicted a speedy exhaustion of our coalfields, and they and their successors 
have since been congratulating themselves on their cleverness in disbelieving the 
prophecy. No such prophecy was in truth ever uttered. The grave warning that 
‘was given was of the impossibility of continuing the rate of development of coal 
production to which we had been accustomed, of slackening, and even arrested 
growth, and of the increasing difticulty of maintaining a prosperity based on the 
relative advantages we possessed in the low cost of production of coal; and this 
warning has been amply verified in the years that have since passed, as will be at 
once admitted by all who are competent to read and understand the significance 
of our subsequent experience. But I must not dwell on this branch of Jevons’s 
work nor on the many other contributions he made to the study of our economic 
life. Tam concerned with what he said here twenty-six years since. 
At first sight the address of my predecessor may seem loose and discursive ; but 
viewed in due perspective, it appears a serious inquiry into the apparent failure of 
economic teaching to change the course and elevate the standard of our social life, 
and an earnest endeavour to impress these principles more strongly on the public 
mind so that the future might better the history he reviewed. He referred to the 
repeal of the Corn Laws, and owned with regret that the condition of the people 
was little changed, that pauperism had scarcely abated, that little forethought was 
shown by the industrial classes in preparing for the chances of the future ; and he 
dwelt on the mischievous influence of the unthinking benevolence of the wealthy 
in undermining provicence by its constant and increasing activity in mitigating the 
