[6. On the Geography of Lower Nubia. By SOMERS CLARKE, F.S.A.

The paper was chiefly confined to that part of Lower Nubia which will be flooded by the proposed Nile reservoir. The difference in size and colour-effect of the scenery in the valley of the Nile above and below Assuan were noticed. The Wadi Kenus, the abode of the Beni Kensi tribe, is nearly coincident with the projected Nile reservoir, and if the proposed scheme is carried out the population to be displaced numbers about 30,000, inhabiting a cultivated area of some 10,000 square acres (?). Population in the Ptolemaic times must have been greater, as there are tracts about Korti and Dakkeh, once under cultivation, now abandoned. In the Dodeka-Schoenus there are a number of temples and remains of antiquity within the district thus named, a further proof of considerable population; and the district is protected by a line of forts, some of very high antiquity, some of later date. The existence of Egyptian civilisation side by side with the ruder customs of the natives is especially to be observed in the method of burial. The present inhabitants on the course of the Nile valley from Assuan to Wadi Halfa exhibit very slight variations in modes of dress, particularly among the women. Men go to Cairo, women stop in the villages, so that the men adopt ordinary dress of fellaheen in Egypt.

The manner of building houses from lumps of earth, crude brick, with flat wooden or vaulted brick roofs constructed in the same way as those used by the ancient Egyptians was noticed. Reed shelters are also in use.

Not only the unique antiquities but the present people, with all life, animal and vegetable alike, are affected by the projected reservoir. In view of the contemplated destruction it is of the utmost importance to make an exhaustive scientific investigation of the valley before it is submerged.

7. On a New Representation of the Vertical Relief of the British Isles. By B. V. DARbishire.

SECTION F.-ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS.

PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION-Professor C. F. BASTABLE, M.A., F.S.S.

THE long period that has elapsed since the British Association last met in Oxford, covering as it does the life of an entire generation remarkable for activity in all departments of scientific work, would of itself suggest at least some passing notice of the changes that have taken place, and the progress realised in the subjects assigned to this section.

But some special reasons combine to give increased interest to a comparison between the position of economic science in 1860 and at the present day. What is usually known as orthodox political economy had taken its final shape and reached its highest point of practical influence just at the time when Nassau W. Senior, one of its most typical expositors, was chosen to preside over Section F. at its first meeting here. Far better even than J. S. Mill, Senior represented the strong and weak points of the English school. Clearness of thought, a firm grasp of elementary principles, and complete freedom from the disturbing influence of sentiment, are distinguishing marks of the compact treatise in which he set forth the chief doctrines of Economics, and they are equally shown in his presidential address. Political economy, he maintains, is a science and nothing else, limited in its scope to the subject of wealth, and concerned rather with mental than with physical phenomena. This very precision and rigid limitation naturally tended to produce some of the less admirable characteristics of the normal political economist. Undue insistence on the omnipotence of purely material motives, a somewhat cynical disregard of the moral forces that influence human action in respect to wealth, and a certain love of paradox, especially in cases where popular prejudice was concerned, may be traced in Senior's writings as in those of most of his contemporaries, and go far to account for the intense repugnance felt by moralists and social reformers for a system which confined itself to one, and that which they deemed the lowest and coarsest side of human life.

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Such as it was, however, with, and in part by reason of, its definiteness and its narrowness, political economy commanded the respect of a large section of the public and of its instructors and guides in the Press, who looked on it as supplying a rational code of industrial and commercial conduct. The recognised principles of political economy,' or 'the immutable laws of supply and demand,' were phrases that occurred as readily to a journalist in the sixties as the exploded doctrine of laisser faire' does to the leader-writer of to-day. The scientific doctrine of the economist applied to practice became the guiding rule of the practical man of business. Its influence on legislation is strikingly shown by two important triumphs gained in this very year (1860). The first and most enduring was the full and complete establishment of free trade as the basis of the fiscal policy of the United Kingdom by the budget measures of the year; the second, though

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transient, is even more instructive for our present purpose-viz., the declaration, in Cardwell's Irish Land Act, that for the future tenancies should rest contract and not on tenure,' so that the relation between letters and hirers of land was reduced to a purely commercial one subject to the law of the market, and released, so far as legislation could secure that result, from all influence of sentiment or custom.

In such a condition of apparent prosperity, it was hardly likely that any apprehensions should be felt as to the future of economic study, and accordingly no signs of misgiving are to be found in Senior's brief but emphatic statements. His sole complaint is directed against the unfortunate tendency on the part of contributors of papers to wander from the region of science into that of art or practice, to the neglect of their proper subject, which afforded a sufficiently ample field for fruitful inquiries.

I need not say that this attitude of calm and assured confidence did not long continue, and it is equally unnecessary to attempt any description of the series of revolts against both the strict theoretical doctrines and some of the practical conclusions of the classical economy. Abundant information as to the leading phases of the movement and the chief actors therein is supplied in works so well known that any summary of their contents could be only the merest commonplace.1 As affording a starting-point for further discussion I may, however, remark that three causes have most effectively operated in bringing about the changed position of our science-viz. (1) The influence of foreign, and chiefly German, workers in the same field; (2) the profound though peaceful political revolution by which power has been transferred to the working classes; and (3) the growth of the doctrine of evolution, which has been perhaps more potent in its effects on the social than even on the biological sciences.

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As regards the first point, there is no room for doubt or question. With the exception of Say and Bastiat-who were chiefly valued as popularisers of English opinions-no foreign economist was at all known in England before the last thirty years. The mere suggestion that we had anything to learn from Germany, Holland, or Italy would have appeared ludicrous to Senior or McCulloch, or, indeed, to the educated public. The true position of the foreigner was that of the humble disciple accepting gladly orthodox English teaching. This insularity of tone undoubtedly retarded progress in all departments of economics, but its evil effect was greatest in preventing any thorough consideration of the social and political groundwork on which all systems of economy rest, and to which all economic theories must, if they are to be enduring, pay adequate attention. The great and saving merit of German economic investigation lies in its unreserved acceptance of this fundamental fact, and it was in this very point that our English predecessors most signally failed. We should have escaped much narrowness and onesidedness of view if our writers had sought to understand and appreciate the Continental conception of the political sciences as an organised group of studies. Nor is it quite clear that this just ground of complaint has been altogether removed. Admirable efforts have been made by Leslie and others to diffuse a general knowledge of the labours of the historical school, and our principal textbooks no longer pass over in silence the weighty contributions of foreign writers to special points of doctrine. Among professed students and teachers of economics there is a considerable and growing acquaintance with the products of foreign thought. Yet it seems as if the best lesson that they convey has not been thoroughly laid to heart, and that most of our attention has been directed to one particular school which makes the nearest approach to English methods, and is therefore least likely to help in correcting our peculiar failings. Is it not somewhat curious-might I not say discreditable-that the works of the eminent Roscher, whose loss every student of economic and political science must deplore,

1 Dr. Ingram's History of Political Economy (1888), pp. 221-235, and Professor Foxwell's letter on The Economic Movement in England,' Quarterly Journal of Economics, October 1887 (vol. ii. pp. 84–103), may be particularly referred to.

2 Political economy,' said Professor Huxley in 1868, is an intensely Anglican science.'-Lay Sermons, p. 48.

have found no English translator or even effective imitator? Other instances ne rly as glaring might be mentioned, leading to the general result that the distinctive differences of the English mode of treating economics are not sufficiently recognised, and further progress is for the time hindered.

Increased political power obtained by the class of manual workers has most markedly altered the prevalent tone of thought on industrial questions, and, if it has not caused, has at all events coincided with the adoption of more tolerant views respecting the effect of labour combinations. Fuller analysis has shown that the consequences of economic action are far more complex and more affected by surrounding conditions than upholders of the orthodox doctrines were willing to admit; but this modification in theory has been guided by the urgent pressure of non-expert opinion. It needed a very hard struggle to secure due recognition of the elements of truth in the trade-union position as to the determination of wages. But the mere substitution of working class' for 'middle class' dogma would not indicate any scientific advance. It is rather in the evidence of the close connection of economic facts with other forms of social activity that the true importance of the change consists. It is henceforth clear that no interpretation of industrial or other economic phenomena can claim to be adequate unless it takes into account the particular forms of social structure and the special political conditions which have helped to produce them.

More profound and far-reaching, both in its actual effects and in its still greater promise for the future, was the appearance of the principle of evolution, that became an active force from 1859. Its immediate influence in one branch of social study is well shown in the reception given to Maine's 'Ancient Law;' and though the economists did not at once recognise the full import of the method in respect to their own department of work, they saw its value in some special points, and thereby gave an opening for its further and more extensive employment. The most obvious of the services that the new conception rendered was in bringing out the general similarity of the various sciences dealing with man, which again made examination of the bonds joining economics to the related subjects a more prominent object. Just as in biology the older inelastic views as to the nature of species and types gave way before the idea of innumerable gradations and transitional forms, so rigidity of definition and isolation of the study of wealth became no longer possible. Economic problems were found to be in contact at many points with social and political ones, and even within the artificially limited field of economics maintenance of the sharp lines between 'capital' and 'noncapital,' between 'rent' and 'interest,' between currency' and 'credit,' presented difficulties in face of the complexities of real life.3

Thus the disposition to take a broader view of the subject, and to widen the general conceptions and the 'setting' in which the received economic doctrines were presented, was encouraged by a series of influences operating in the same direction, and which, taken together, have left no inconsiderable mark on the actual condition of the science. The severest critic of the current political economy cannot, without unfairness, refuse to admit the improvement in tone, the greater thoroughness in the investigation of economic problems, and the wider range undertaken by the latest work of the English school. Much that was misleading or positively erroneous has been removed, and many valuable additions. have been made to that part of the older system which has successfully stood the test of hostile examination. There is, besides, ample opportunity afforded for carrying on the work of reconstruction; indeed, it is chiefly because any suggestions. no matter how crude or imperfectly thought out, are likely to receive fair and candid consideration that I venture to notice some of the respects in which the revised

The Grundlagen, the least characteristic and original of Roscher's works, has been translated in America, but the other volumes of his System' and his remaining writings are inaccessible to the English student.

2 See J. S. Mill's Principles, Book II., chap. ii. § 3n, and Cairnes' Political Essays, p. 154, for recognition of Maine's services. But to the end neither seemed to understand the real bearing of the evolutionary mode of thought.

See Marshall's Principles, Preface, pp. vi.-x., on this point.

1894.

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and amended economic doctrine, as it appears to-day, seems to require further expansion and readjustment.

In the first place I cannot feel that there is any adequate expression of the ultimate dependence of economics on that larger subject of study which treats of society as a whole. It is no doubt true that our leading economists state very distinctly the great importance of a science of society could it only be brought into a healthful existence; but such general confessions lose most of their value when accompanied by a very pronounced scepticism as to the establishment in the present or near future of any set of doctrines worthy of the name of sociology. The very danger of this attitude lies in the fact that in one way it is so undeniably correct. When some of the more vehement assailants of the old political economy sought to contrast it to its disadvantage with a supposed social science into which it was to be absorbed, it was very natural to reply that political economy, however defective, was a fact, while sociology' was best described as an aspiration.' There was no difficulty in showing that the so-called systems of sociology consisted of imperfectly collated facts and daring-often most unlucky-guesses as to the course of future events. The strict economist stood on very safe ground in contending against the dogmatism of the Positive Polity. But though the best attempts at a systematic treatment of social science have hitherto been grossly defective, this affords no excuse for neglecting a statement and analysis of the fundamental conceptions appropriate to social study and presupposed in all more special inquiries.

Political economy, like jurisprudence or political science proper, requires as its basis a fairly accurate comprehension of these preliminary parts of sociology. The questions What is a society?' 'What are the conditions necessary for its existence? In what manner the chief social structures are produced?"—and many others of the same class should, I believe, be discussed as an introduction to the narrower economic problems. Moreover, some topics that seem purely economic have really a far wider significance. Division of labour,' 'Supply and demand,' and The population question,' must be regarded in a broader way than is possible within the limits that logical symmetry prescribes to the economist. In fact, the greater part of the matter to be found in the division of our text-books devoted to the subject of Production' is only introduced to supply the want of a due preparatory study of the leading features of what I may for the moment call the social organism.' That expression has unfortunately some unsatisfactory implications. It seems to give support to the idea that the social and political sciences may be regarded as mere appendices to biology, and that by a liberal adoption of the technical terms of that science we can turn out a complete and definite system without the trouble of continued effort applied directly to the study of social phenomena. This belief seems to me to be hopelessly mistaken, and I would protest as strongly as anyone against the 'manipulation of biological ideas and phrases '* as a mode of dealing with either economic or social questions. But the general conceptions which are needed to realise the broad features of social structure are not the peculiar property of any single science. Division of labour, e.g., was recognised as a social truth long before its importance for the vital sciences was appreciated. It is therefore quite possible, without any illegitimate borrowing or routine imitation of inappropriate methods of exposition, to provide a satisfactory groundwork of social doctrine on which our economic theories can be securely based. Such a change in the usual method of treatment would be in harmony with the development of economics during the last twenty years, and could be attained without any sacrifice of the valuable material stored up in the standard treatises. Nor is it merely at the outset that systematic reference to social structures and conditions is required; all through the course of investigation that the economist has to pursue he will find that fresh light is thrown on even the minutest details by continually keeping in mind and striving as far as possible to realise the complete life of the society which exhibits them as one part of its varied activities. 1 See Sidgwick, 'Scope and Method of Political Economy,' in Statistical Society's Journal, vol. xlviii. p. 612; Marshall, Principles, Book I., chap. v. § 1; Nicholson, Principles, pp. 11-14.

2 Nicholson, Principles, p. 12.