a considerable number of new legal points were raised, several of which were taken into various Courts of Law, and some were carried up to the House of Lords, but no one was ever ultimately decided contrary to what I had laid down in the original Scheme. After superintending the working of the new system for six years, I resigned my office in consequence of ceasing to reside in Ross-shire.'

I thus carried out successfully a great practical, legal, and Economical experiment.

Although the administration of the Poor Law is a very important branch of practical Political Economy, I had never in any way studied the subject of Political Economy generally, nor even read any work on it. But in 1854, a circumstance occurred which compelled me to go thoroughly into the whole science.

In 1844 and 1845, Sir Robert Peel passed his two celebrated Bank Acts, the latter for regulating the formation of any new Joint Stock Bauks founded after that date.

A Joint Stock Bank had been founded under this Act, and, as is always the case, when the Act came to be worked practically, many new difficulties occurred which had not been provided for. One of these related to the method in which the capital of the Bank might be increased after it was started and in operation. 1 On accepting my resignation my colleagues passed the following minute :— "EASTER ROSS UNION POORHOUSE, 3rd January, 1854.

"There was read to the Meeting a letter from Mr. MACLEOD, stating that in consequence of his having given up his residence in Ross-shire, he is obliged to resign the office of Chairman of the Board.

"In accepting Mr. MACLEOD's resignation, the Board desire to record their appreciation of the great value of the services he has rendered to the parishes forming the Union. They are convinced that the existence of the Poorhouse, its establishment on a basis equitable to the various parishes, the good plan of the House, and almost all the arrangements which have made it an effectual check on the demands of persons whose necessities are produced only by their indolence, while it increases the comforts of the deserving poor, are due to the information procured by Mr. MACLEOD of the working of the poorhouse system in other parts of the country, to the ability with which he digested the information so acquired for the use of the parishes, to the pains taken by him in forming the arrangements for bringing the establishment into operation, and the unwearied labour he has continued to bestow in the supervision of its every day proceedings."

The Board of Trade was distinctly informed beforehand of the nature of the difficulty, and the method in which the Directors proposed to overcome it. The Charter of the Bank was prepared with the sanction and concurrence of the Board of Trade and their legal adviser Mr. Bellenden Ker, and contained provisions for overcoming the difficulty, and if the Board of Trade had not agreed to them beforehand, the Bank never would have been founded at all.

Relying on this promise, the Bank was founded, and proved highly successful, and it soon became necessary to put into force the provisions of the Charter for increasing its capital.

When, however, the Directors of the Bank applied to the Board of Trade to carry out the provisions of the Charter respecting the increase of its Capital, the Board told them that Mr. Ker considered these provisions illegal, and that the Crown had no authority to grant the powers required.

This would have been a fatal blow to the Bank, and the Directors applied to Mr. Wilde, now Lord Penzance, who was in high repute as a commercial lawyer; but from some cause or another the case did not go further.

After struggling in vain for four years with the Board of Trade and Mr. Ker, who still maintained his opinion, the Directors put the case before me, and I gave it as my opinion that the Board of Trade and Mr. Ker were mistaken in Law, that the Crown had full authority to grant the powers required, and that I could draw such a Case as would convince them that they were wrong. The Directors then instructed me to prepare such a Case for them, and the Board of Trade ordered the whole matter to be referred to the then Law Officers of the Crown, the present Lord Westbury and the Lord Chief Justice of England. They decided in my favour, and Mr. Ker, after reading the Case I had drawn, was convinced that he had been mistaken.

The preparation of this Case showed me how utterly erroneous were a great portion of the doctrines current even among

Economists of the highest name, and gave rise to my first publication, The Theory and Practice of Banking, in which, for the first time, the great subject of Banking was treated in a systematic form, and an actual exposition of its mechanism given.

The immense part which Banking and Credit play in modern commerce, and the way which they affect every branch of Political Economy, were, I found, very ill appreciated in the professed treatises. None of them even attempted to give an actual exposition of the facts, or had any fixed nomenclature. In 1858, I published my Elements of Political Economy, in which, for the first time, an attempt was made to treat Political Economy as a distinct body of phenomena, based upon a single central idea, and to fix a definite sense to its fundamental terms.

This work is intended to be a practical exposition of Economic phenomena. But the present state of the Science of Political Economy is so peculiar, that a great deal more was necessary to hasten its erection into an exact Science, and I therefore undertook the Work on which I have been for some years engaged, and which is now in course of publication, my Dictionary of Political Economy.

The first Economists found the public mind and the administration infected with an immense mass of rooted prejudices, errors, and abuses. Their first efforts were therefore naturally directed to sweep these away. The early treatises are filled with long controversies and discussions, which, though of the greatest importance at that time, may now be dismissed in a few lines.

With that great practical work before them, which it required a century to accomplish, it is not very surprising that Economists have not hitherto given any very close attention to settle the exact foundations of the Science. But it may now be said that the destructive period has passed, and that the constructive era has come. As in all young and growing sciences, further experience and new phenomena have shewn that many of the

early opinions and doctrines require modification and correction. Many isolated doctrines have been established, and on certain special subjects a considerable amount of truth has been ascertained. But this has never hitherto been formed into a coherent system, based upon general conceptions, after the manner of a Physical Science. Leading terms are used without sufficient uniformity, and this leads to inconsistency of doctrine. Above all there is wanted a plain exposition of FACTS, so as to supply intelligent readers with materials to form their own judgment upon the soundness of the doctrines based upon them.

Such is the purpose of my DICTIONARY OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, of which the first Volume has been published.

It is an endeavour to bring Political Economy into the state of an exact science:

By settling its Fundamental Conceptions. It brings together into a focus all the conflicting opinions of different writers, both ancient and modern, on every separate point, and an attempt is made to arrive at a critical judgment by the acknowledged standards of Inductive Logic.

By giving an actual exposition of the mechanism of the different branches of Commerce.

By giving an historical account, drawn from the best native authorities, of Economic phenomena in various countries.

It gives an analysis of the works of all the principal Italian, French, English, and American Economists.

Much valuable information, the germs of many important theories, several of the chief doctrines, and the opinions of many persons eminent in Political Economy, are only to be found in pamphlets and other fugitive writings. Copious extracts are given from such pamphlets, &c., containing all such facts, opinions, and doctrines as are of permanent value.

It will be preceded by a preliminary Dissertation, containing a narrative of the rise and progress of the Science from the earliest times, being a complete History of Ideas on the subject up to the latest form it has assumed.

Thus the work will form a complete Encyclopædia of Political Economy, by giving an actual exposition of facts, by bringing together all conflicting opinions, and endeavouring to form an accurate judgment, on each separate point.

One species of Credit having been greatly abused, has greatly contributed to cause those frightful commercial crises which seem to recur periodically in every commercial community, as well as many individual catastrophes,-namely Accomodation Paper. It has been the chief cause of so many calamities, that it has often been proposed to adopt Legislative measures to curb it. This, however, for reasons too technical to mention, is impossible; and, besides, a large portion of the most beneficial part of Credit is of the nature of Accommodation Paper. The popular objections to it, therefore, as had been partly pointed out long ago by Mr. Thornton in his Essay on Paper Credit, are very wide of the mark. In my Theory and Practice of Banking I explained, for the first time, wherein the true danger of Accommodation paper consists. In 1861, the old established house of Lawrence, Mortimer, and Schrader failed for an immense amount, and the failure proved to be one of the most flagrant cases on record of the abuse of Accommodation Paper. The Commissioner in Bankruptcy, Mr. Holroyd, in his judgment in this case, quoted my explanation of the danger of Accommodation Paper, at very great length, thereby giving the sanction of his high authority to its correctness.

In April, 1862, M. MICHEL CHEVALIER presented a Report on my works to the Institute of France, declaring his adhesion to my doctrines, especially on the subject of Credit. This Report was published in the Journal des Economistes for August, 1862.

In 1863, M. ROUHER, then Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, in the then French Empire, caused M. HENRI RICHELOT, one of the chiefs of his department, to draw up an account of my doctrines, and he then ordered the work to be officially distributed to all the Chambers of Commerce in the Empire.