power in English students, has led our economic writers to ignore too much the great works of the French and Italian economists, as well as the invaluable recent treatises of German writers. The survey of the foreign literature of the subject given in this Guide will enable the English student to fix the bearings of the point of knowledge which he has reached, and to estimate the fraction of the ocean of economic literature which he has been able to traverse.

Of course it is not to be expected, nor even to be desired, that English students of Economics should at once endeavour to master treatises in the French, German, Italian, and other languages. A few may be able thus to extend their studies; and it is believed that they will find in Dr. Cossa a safe pilot to the course of reading they may best pursue for their special purposes. The ordinary student must necessarily be contented with a second-hand and superficial acquaintance with the masses of literature here indicated. But it would be a mistake to treat such knowledge as worthless. The late Professor De

Morgan said, or at least very happily repeated the saying, that "true education consists in knowing everything of something and something of everything." Applying this maxim to our science, the judicious student of Economics must necessarily select the works of Adam Smith, of Ricardo, of J. S. Mill, of Cairnes, or of some one or a very few leading

English economists, and must study them, so to say, completely. They will be the something of which he must learn everything. But, when this has been sufficiently accomplished, he cannot do better than learn the something of everything in economic literature, which is admirably given in this Guide.

One valuable result which will probably be derived from the reading of Professor Cossa's work is the conviction that the historical method must play a large part in economic science. Without for a moment admitting, with some extreme advocates of that method,1 that there is no such thing as an abstract science of Economics, the student will readily become convinced that in such matters as land tenure, agriculture, the organisation of industry, taxation, &c., theory must be applied with very large allowances for physical and historical circumstances. National character, ancient custom, political condition, and many other conditions, are economic factors of great importance. Although some of our best English economists were fully alive to this fact, there is nevertheless an almost inevitable tendency to regard the complicated industrial organisation of England as if it were the natural and best organisation, to which other nations have failed, in a more or less serious degree, to attain. Wider study

1 See, for instance, Professor Cliffe Leslie's Essay on the "Philosophical Method of Political Economy," in Hermathena, No. iv.,

I will show that economic as well as political and social development must bear relation to the historical and physical circumstances of the race. It is surely time to abandon the idea, for instance, that the landlord system of land-tenure of England, even supposing that it is the best for English agriculture, is necessarily the best for France, Belgium, Norway, India, Australia, Ireland, and the rest of the habitable world in general. In the fourth chapter of the First Part Dr. Cossa has very clearly refuted some of the prevailing errors on the subject of the historical method.

Now and again we meet opinions and expressions in the Guide in which it is impossible to coincide. On page 124 of this translation, for instance, the author speaks of "the notable advantages to industrial organisation and progress," which he thinks have been conferred in its time by the Protective System. Few, or probably no English economist, would now accept this opinion, unless with qualifications and explanations which would really reverse the writer's meaning. Nor is this, as we think, the only scientific or doctrinal blemish of the work. Yet after all exception is taken it must be allowed that the author has performed his difficult task in a most judicious and impartial manner.

As Dr. Cossa has passed over without mention most of his own economic labours, it should be stated that

he has been, since the year 1858, Professor of Political Economy in the University of Pavia. During nearly a quarter of a century he has devoted himself entirely to the promotion and dissemination of economic science, and not a few of the rising economists of Italy owe their success to his instructions. Among his principal works may be mentioned the Primi Elementi di Economia Politica, first published at Milan in 1875, of which a fourth edition, considerably augmented, appeared in 1878. Spanish and German translations were printed in 1878 and 1879. His second work was the Primi Elementi di Scienza delle Finanze (1875), of which a third edition is about to appear. Various essays on economic subjects have been reprinted in a volume under the title Saggi di Economia Politica (Milan, 1878).

The Guida allo Studio dell' Economia Politica, of which the following pages contain an English version, was originally published at Milan in 1876; a second revised and enlarged edition being issued in 1878. A Spanish translation was printed at Valladolid in 1878, and it is said that a German translation by Dr. Edward Moormeister is to appear during the course of the present year at Freiburg. The considerable use which is thus evidently being made of Professor Cossa's text-books will not surprise a reader who can appreciate the extraordinary extent and accuracy of Dr. Cossa's knowledge of the economic literature of almost all nations.

This characteristic of his works may be partly explained by the fact that he was in early life a pupil of that most learned and eminent economist, Professor Wilhelm Roscher. In England we cannot hope to compete with the polyglot learning of a Roscher or a Cossa, but it is to be hoped that not a few English students of economics, who are seldom polyglots, will use this translated Guide in order to make themselves a little less insular than they would otherwise be.

The work of translation has been carried out by a former lady student in one of the excellent classes of Political Economy, conducted under the superintendence of the Cambridge Society for the Extension of University Teaching. Acknowledgments are due to Professor Cossa for corrections and additions, which bring up the work to the present year.

W. STANLEY JEVONS.