the name of Oresme appeared in any American newspaper or in any American work. It does not even appear in the Century Cyclopedia of Names, just issued. My own copy of his treatise is the only one I ever found here, except the one in the Astor Library, although I have often asked for the work, and have been impressed with the feeling that "the battle of the standards" would finally be waged around Oresme's writings.

On the evening of the same day on which my letter had been printed in that morning's Tribune, November 21st, 1894, the Evening Post said editorially :

"It is good to read Prof. Hadley's protest in the Yale Review against making an occult science of political economy. He most justly says of some recent tendencies in economic literature that they may be part of a science intended to warm the hearts of antiquarians, dialecticians, or sentimentalists, but are only so much weariness of the flesh for statesmen and business men. They take some psychologic speculation and beat it up

Nineteenth Century Review. 175

into a world-lather, as Carlyle would say, stating conclusions in such language that, as Prof. Hadley says, 'nobody could ever find out, by observation of prices, whether they were right or wrong.'

One would naturally expect to find the Evening Post encouraging most thorough study and research. It was by years of historical study that Locke and Adam Smith, etc., were able to accomplish what they did for the science of economics. In another article on the same page the Post referred to Macleod as follows:

'We reprint to-day in full, from the Nineteenth Century Magazine, the most crushing reply to the bimetallists in brief compass which, in our opinion, the controversy has called forth, from Mr. Dunning Macleod, the well-known economical writer. A more trenchant exposure of the bimetallic fallacies we have never read, and it is none the less trenchant for being mainly historical."

Macleod's article fills three and one half columns of the Post, and is chiefly a

condensation of his book, lately published, and to which I have referred above. I have expressed my opinion of this work. on page 159.

In this article from the London Nineteenth Century Review for this month, November, 1894, The Monometalist Creed, which I would call a Brief rather than a Creed, it is noticeable that, as in his late book, Bimetalism, Macleod still omits to mention even the name of Wolowski, who, in 1864, had so thoroughly disproved the statement that Sir Thomas Gresham was entitled to be considered the great discoverer of what Macleod in 1858 called the Gresham law.

In 1862, Roscher's paper on Oresme's treatise was presented to the Institute of France, and Wolowski's étude on Oresme's treatise was read at the annual meeting of the Institute. In 1864, Wolowski printed the original Latin and old French. texts, showing that Oresme and Copernicus had understood and declared this law long before Gresham was born. But

1 Bentkowski published the Monete Cudende Ratio in 1816

Cossa's Introduction, Etc.

177

Macleod continued to claim it as Gresham's great discovery.

Thus in his Elements of Banking, published in 1876, Macleod says: "Sir Thomas Gresham explained the cause, whence we have called it Gresham Law."

And even in the last edition of his Theory of Credit, vol. ii., published in 1890, Macleod says: "Sir Thomas Gresham first explained the reason to Queen Elizabeth, and therefore we have called it 'Gresham Law of the Coinage,' and this name is now universally recognized."

But in the English edition of Cossa's great standard work, published in 1893, Introduction to the Study of Political Economy, the facts as stated by Wolowski are plainly set forth in English, and now in Macleod's book, published in July, 1894, and in his magazine article, published this November, Macleod says that "it ought to be called the law of Oresme, Copernicus, and Gresham," but he does not mention Wolowski's name, although he is plainly much indebted to Wolowski's very able work, and to the important notices it con1 This work contains a valuable bibliology.

tains on Oresme, by Roscher and Wolowski.

I cannot recollect that Macleod has ever mentioned Wolowski, and as Macleod's voluminous works are mostly published without indexes, it is difficult to ascertain. But Macleod's statement in this month's Nineteenth Century, that the great treatise of Oresme, "in twenty-six chapters, has only recently been brought to the notice of economists," requires to be modified by stating the fact that this treatise was most elaborately published thirty years ago by W. L. Wolowski with very valuable notes.

Authors of great repute among the gold monometallists formerly found much fault with Macleod's "peculiar views," "opposition to Say and Mill on credit, and to Ricardo on rent,” etc. He was said to be "at issue with the recognized authorities, and that, too, on points of the first importance.

Luigi Cossa said:

"Macleod is a

1 See The Readers' Guide in Economics, etc., edited by Bowker and Iles.