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Rh, to fill the chair made vacant by the death of John Stuart Mill, and also in the same year by the voting to him of the degree of D, C. L. by the University of Oxford, England. The honorary degree of LL. D. had been previously given to him by the college of his graduation (Williams), and that of M. D. by the Berkshire Medical College in 1863. In 1873, on invitation of the Cobden Club, Mr, Wells visited England and delivered the address at the annual meeting and dinner of the club. In 1872 he was invited to lecture on economic subjects at Yale College. In 1875 he was elected. President of the Democratic State Convention of Connecticut; and he has served twice as delegate at large from Connecticut to Presidential nominating conventions, i. e., in 1872 and 1880. In 1876, Mr. Wells, after refusing to accept a regular nomination for Congress in the third district of Connecticut, was put upon the course by resolution of the Democratic convention, with the result, in the face of conditions otherwise wholly favorable to the Republicans, of reducing a hitherto impregnable Republican majority from 1,176 to 40.

In 1870 Mr. Wells was elected a member of the Cobden Club; in 1871, honorary member of the Royal Statistical Society of England; in 1875, President of the American Social Science Association, succeeding Dr. Woolsey, of New Haven; in 1877, a foreign associate member of the Regia Academic dei Lincei, of Italy; in 1880, President of the New London County (Conn.) Historical Society; and in 1881, President of the American Free-Trade League. In 1878, Mr. Wells was appointed by the President a member and subsequently elected President of the National Board of Visitors to the United States Military Academy at West Point. In 1876 he was appointed by the United States court one of three trustees and receiver£; of the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad, and in the course of the following fourteen months rescued the corporation from bankruptcy, and expended a considerable sum for improvements and repairs, without incurring an additional dollar of indebtedness. In 1877 he was appointed by the State Board of Canal Commissioners chairman of a commission to consider the subject of tolls on the New York canals, and in the next year made an exhaustive and acceptable report.

In 1879, in connection with the late E. D. Morgan, of New York, and J. Lowber Welsh, of Philadelphia, and as trustees of the bondholders, he bought under foreclosure and sale, and reorganized the New York and Erie Railroad, and served for some time as a member of the finance committee of the board of direction of the new company. In 1879 he was elected by the associated railways of the United States, in connection with Charles Francis Adams, of Massachusetts, and John M. Wright, of Philadelphia, a member of a board of arbitration, to which the associated railroads agreed to refer all their disputes and all arrangements for pooling or apportioning their respective competitive