the gold question, brought up to date and tested by comparison with
statistics of prices. Among the other articles in the volume the more
important are the criticisms on Bastiat and Comte, and the essays on
_Political Economy and Land_, and on _Political Economy and Laissez-Faire_,
which have been referred to above. In 1874 appeared his largest work, _Some
Leading Principles of Political Economy, newly Expounded_, which is beyond
doubt a worthy successor to the great treatises of Smith, Malthus, Ricardo
and Mill. It does not expound a completed system of political economy; many
important doctrines are left untouched; and in general the treatment of
problems is not such as would be suited for a systematic manual. The work
is essentially a commentary on some of the principal doctrines of the
English school of economists, such as value, cost of production, wages,
labour and capital, and international values, and is replete with keen
criticism and lucid illustration. While in fundamental harmony with Mill,
especially as regards the general conception of the science, Cairnes
differs from him to a greater or less extent on nearly all the cardinal
doctrines, subjects his opinions to a searching examination, and generally
succeeds in giving to the truth that is common to both a firmer basis and a
more precise statement. The last labour to which he devoted himself was a
republication of his first work on the _Logical Method of Political
Economy_.

Taken as a whole the works of Cairnes formed the most important
contribution to economical science made by the English school since the
publication of J.S. Mill's _Principles_. It is not possible to indicate
more than generally the special advances in economic doctrine effected by
him, but the following points may be noted as establishing for him a claim
to a place beside Ricardo and Mill: (1) His exposition of the province and
method of political economy. He never suffers it to be forgotten that
political economy is a _science_, and consequently that its results are
entirely neutral with respect to social facts or systems. It has simply to
trace the necessary connexions among the phenomena of wealth and dictates
no rules for practice. Further, he is distinctly opposed both to those who
would treat political economy as an integral part of social philosophy, and
to those who have attempted to express economic facts in quantitative
formulae and to make economy a branch of applied mathema