the effect that the time was not ripe. No economist had refused help, and almost everyone had promised active help. It was remarkable that England was in these matters behind other countries; but this state of things was due not to the want of careful consideration of the matter, but to sad accident. For although England in 1870 had a stronger array of economists than any other country--not more learned, but more full of creative power within a few years the greater number of them were dead. Cairnes, Jevons, Bagehot, Cliffe Leslie, Toynbee, and Fawcett, whose power and originality placed them in the first rank, and who would have been the right men to take the lead in such a movement, died prematurely in the prime of life. Thus, though in 1870 England was remarkably strong, later on she was remarkably weak in economists of mark; and therefore he did not think they were to blame for not having started this movement long ago. Happily, however, in 1890 we had a large number of very able young men at Oxford, Cambridge, and elsewhere, who were at the age at which they might be expected to write papers suitable for a journal. Thus, while others, like Mr. Palgrave and Professor Foxwell, had long taken a more cheery view of the situation, even he now felt that the time had come for the movement which they were beginning, and he no longer doubted whether it would be possible to maintain a journal at a high level of excellence. Had the journal been started a little time ago the announcement that the Oxford University branch of the Christian Union was going to bring out an Economic Review would have caused them some dismay. But, as things now were, he thought they were strong enough to support both journals. The Review was started for the purpose of dealing with problems in which ethical and religious questions took the first place, but which had a certain kernel of economic difficulty in the background. But there was room for that and for their own journal; and he hoped the two would supplement and strengthen one another. He was glad that Mr. Phelps, the Editor of the Review, was among them that afternoon. He had said that he had received promises of assistance from almost every economist. Besides that, he had received a great number of suggestions from persons who were not economists, some of which expressed the hope that the proposed Association would 'exert a wholesome influence.' That was the one thing which he hoped they would not set themselves to do. Their desire was not to 'exert a wholesome influence' in the sense of setting up a standard of orthodoxy, to which all contributors had to conform; economics was a science, and
