The present position and prospects of political economy: being the introductory address delivered in the Section of Economic Science and Statistics of the British Association for the Advancement of Science

Abstract

Had I been called upon at any other time to preside over this section, I should have followed the example of most of my predecessors, in selecting as the subject of the discourse which it is usual to deliver from this chair, some one of the special economic questions of the day, which my knowledge might have enabled me most adequately, or, let me rather say, least inadequately to treat. But I have felt that the matter with which I should deal has been practically determined for me beforehand. An important crisis in the history of our section has taken place. Its claim to form a part of the British Association has been disputed. Some of the cultivators of the older branches of research but half recognise the right of Political Economy and Statistics to citizenship in the commonwealth of science, and it is not obscurely intimated on their part that these studies would do well to relinquish pretensions which cannot be sustained, and proceed, with or without shame, to take the lower room to which alone they are entitled.