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section, and towards the centre in the longitudinal section. 
The longitudinal cells and stringers should be placed as near 
as possible to the upper deck or the keel as the case may be, 
and they should be gradually reduced in thickness from the 
centre towards the ends of the vessel. With the exception of 
most of the sheathing plates and ribs, which may be left 
uniform, no more material should be expended upon the 
intermediate parts, approaching the neutral line, than is 
absolutely necessary. 
With the adoption of this improved system of construction, 
and a closer adherence to sound principles of design, I am of 
opinion that greater security may be obtained, and the fearful 
accidents which have so frequently occurred be greatly 
mitigated in severity, if not entirely prevented. 
A Paper was read by the Rev. W. N. Molesworth, 
M.A., “ On the Politico-Economical Doctrines respecting the 
Causes which Regulate the Price of Commodities.” 
The reader of the Paper stated that although this was one 
of the most important and fully ventilated questions of politi- 
cal economy, it was still a subject on which economists 
differed. That while Archbishop Whately and most of the 
elder political economists held that the prices of commodities 
depend on the proportion between demand and supply, recent 
writers had put forward the theory that they “are fixed by 
cost of production and varied by the supply and demand,” or 
as it was otherwise expressed, that “the cost of production 
was the main and principal cause of the price of any commo- 
dity, and supply and demand are the causes of the variation 
of its price.” 
The reader of the Paper dissented from these statements 
of the causes on which the price of commodities depends, 
first, because they represent, as he thought erroneously, that 
the price originally fixed depends on one cause and the subse- 
quent variations from that price on another ; and, secondly. 
