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Section F.— ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS. 

 President of the Section— Professor W. Cunningham, D.D., D.Sc, F.S.S. 



I 



THURSDAY, AUGUST 20. 

 The Pbesident delivered the following Address : — 



Nationalism ami Oosmopolitanisni in JEconomics. 



The year which has elapsed since this Association met at Leeds has afforded 

 ample evidence of the vitality of economic studies in England at the present time. 

 It is no small proof of a widely diffused desire to pursue such investigations 

 seriously that a second edition of such a substantial volume as our late President's 

 ' Principles of Economics ' should have been called for within a few months of the 

 issue of the first. While, too, economics alone among sciences has been hitherto 

 unrepresented by any journal or review published in England, the year which has 

 passed has seen first one and then another quarterly periodical started with the 

 avowed object of catering for the wants of economic students. The larger of these 

 magazines has come into being as the organ of an Association which is designed to 

 do other work for our science besides that which it has already undertaken. 



Both of these new ventures deserve a hearty welcome from this Section, 

 though in different ways, for they have emanated from different sources. The 

 ' Review ' bears on the forefront that it hails from Oxford ; while the ' Journal ' 

 and its destinies have been often talked over at Cambridge, and it seems to me, at 

 least, to be full of the Cambridge spirit. The old contrast between these two 

 Universities comes out strongly and distinctly. The intense interest which Oxford 

 has always shown in the study of man and of conduct has put her in practical 

 touch with many sides of actual life, and has caused her to be the mother of not 

 a few great movements. But in Cambridge we are so engrossed in the study of 

 things that we have no time to spare for trying to know ourselves. If we ever 

 do give our thoughts to man, we like to think of him as if he were a kind of 

 thing ; so that we may apply the same methods which we are wont to use in the 

 study of physical phenomena. If we turn our attention to history, we try to 

 classify the various forms of constitution that have existed on the globe, and then 

 we call the result Political Science. We may devote ourselves to Ancient or 

 Modern Literature, but thev seem to interest us not as vehicles of thought or as 

 forms of art, but as the bases of Philological or Phonological Science. If we 

 investigate human industry, we like to treat the individual as if he were a mere 

 mechanism, and busy ourselves in measuring the force of the motives that may be 

 brought to bear upon him. It is when we deal with physical things that we can 

 be precise ; this we are determined to be at all hazards ; and of course we may 

 always attain to precision in our statements on human affairs so long as we are 

 content to be superficial, and are not at pains to jDenetrate to the very heart of the 

 matter. But indeed there are dangers on either band, whether we give ourselves 

 as best we may to the study of Man, and deal with Economics in its more human 

 aspects; or whether we are chietiy interested in the study of things, and try to 



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