Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/25

Rh an 'orthodox science' was a contradiction in terms. Science could be true or false, but could not be orthodox; and the best way to find out what was true was to welcome the criticisms of all people who knew what they were talking about. In that way indeed he did hope they would exercise a wholesome influence on the character of economic discussion. In the past, time had been wasted in controversies which ought never to have come into existence—controversies based upon a perversion of the words of some writer, the critic interpreting them in the most foolish sense possible, and then writing long articles to prove that they were absurd when thus misinterpreted. All sciences in their early youth had been pestered by this sort of controversy, though economics had suffered more than others. The one influence which he hoped they would exercise would be that they would start from an absolutely catholic basis, and include every school of economists which was doing genuine work. He trusted that those who should control this journal would insist that all who wrote in criticism of others should take the writings of those others in the best possible sense, and in that way all schools might work amicably together, interpreting each other in the fairest and most generous manner; acting on that principle they would make sound progress. They might also extend the area of their work to the republication of old treatises and the translation of the best foreign works. A more difficult question was whether they should undertake the holding of discussions; and on that they had not come to a conclusion. But, whether they did or not, they had a great work before them in securing that catholicity of which their chairman was so admirable an example. He was a man who combined the highest business knowledge with the highest economic training. Working in this spirit, he hoped they would be able to promote economic knowledge by fair and frank discussions, while avoiding that waste of effort in bitter and ungenerous controversy which had long impeded progress. Mr., in seconding the resolution, had little to add to what had been so well said by Professor Marshall as to the formation of an economic association, primarily with the purpose of establishing a journal. All would be agreed that in respect of monthly or quarterly journals devoted to economic and economico-statistical subjects this country was rather behindhand. Our business journals were more numerous, and of a more excellent quality than those of other countries. But we were deficient in papers of the class of the Journal des Economistes in France or