Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/787

 RVr. WS 765 without exchange, no division of labour; without property, no ex- change; and exchange is exchange of ' values' (282),. We may differ from this reasoning of Mallet's without being Socialists; there might be a division of labour and a distribution of wealth that did not involve private property as we now have it, or ' values' as now understood (cf. 299). We might object, also, if on purely theoretical grounds, to the statement that 'man is incessantly occupied in creating and dis- covering values for the purpose of exchange '(283), if it were not practically explained away immediately (286). It is (we are told) the aspiration of society to convert ' values' into 'utilities,' but of individls to convert utilities into values. Here again the premises of our author might lead to a conclusion different from his own. The concluding paper on the' Unearned Increment' proceeds on the same lines. It contains (besides many familiar arguments against Mill and land-nationalisers) some acute passages on the general theory of rent and other economic doctrine, s. The defence of .Malthus (316) against a criticism of Bagehot seems peculiarly happy and w.ell ex- pressed. The writing of the whole book is vigorous and emphatic, and leaves the impression of a singular power and singular sincerity. ' Si Pergama dextr, Defendi possent, etiam hc defensa fuissent.' JAMES BOYAR Die theoretische National;3konomie Italiens in neuester Zeit. Yon Dr. H. v. ScvLw. Leipzig. 1891. Duncker and Humblot. DR. V. SCHULLERN has undertaken an analysis of recent economical thought in Italy, and settled upon the year 1875 as the one most proper for taking his start from. Two circumstances strike one at the very first. Why has von Schullern taken a particular interest in Italian economists, and why does he begin at the year 1875 ? Italy has not produced in the latter part of this century any economist who can rival Ricardo, or J. B. Say, or Stuart Mill, or Cournot, or Jevons, or Roscher, or others, who either through their originality as thinkers, or through the comprehensive and methodical nature of their intellect, or through the vastness and solidity of their knowledge, have obtained a primary place for themselves in the history of science. Nor is Italy one of those new countries, like the United States or Russia, whose future grandeur is expected to possess dimensions as yet never seen, and whose youth therefore presents all the theoretical and practical interest which is generally taken by all in the first symptoms of wilfulness of every little Hercules. I suppose v. Schullern's decision was based on two reasons, of which the first emerges from his book clearer than the second, viz., an interest in the country which had produced, not more than a century ago, a series of economists numbering over thirty,