NOTICES OF BOOKS.

Evening Star, Issue 3270, 13 August 1873, Page 3

NOTICES OF BOOKS.

Outlines of Political Economy, by A. H. Dick, D.S.C. (Edinburgh), M.A., L.L. B. (London). William Collins, Sons, and Co., Loudon and Glasgow ; A. R. Livingston, Dunedin.

We do not know anything in which accurate knowledge is required so much as in this science. To most peoplethe verynamo is repellent. It is associated with notions of dry, hard study; destructive of all emotion, ana calculated to close our sympathies against the claims for consideration by our fellow creatures .Such writers as Ruskin, and others of that class, whose temperament leads them to the contemplation of the sensuous rather than the abstract, have done nuich to deter educated persons from studying political economy, and we are therefore glad to see the principles of the science brought into the form of a school book, and reduced to an axiomatic form easily remembered, containing a summary of the arguments and illustrations under the separate divisions. The writer says in the preface : Many and excellent as are the books which have been written on the _ subject, it is clear enough that there is room for more. One has hut to think of the ignorance of the truths of the science which is displayed in most conversatoins on capital and labor, and to take note of some of the proceedings of both parties in the struggle which is at present going or. between these two to see that—however well the truths of Political Economy may be known by a fewmuch has yet to be done before they permeate society, so as to be the acknowledged basis for the rules and objects of our industrial combinations. There is hope for the next generation of statesmen when the school is made the means of preparing them for their work by the introduction of carefully prepared elementary works like the one under our notice. Wo have also received a copy of this work from Mr William Hay, whom we beg to thank.