Investigation in currency and finance

The circumstances in which the present volume of papers by the late Mr. Stanley Jevons is offered to the public have been partly explained by Mrs. Jevons in her Preface to it. In this short Introduction, which, at her request, I have gladly under taken to write, I shall have little to add to what she has there said, in regard to the history of the volume; but I shall attempt to give some account of the general nature of the papers it contains, and to point out some considerations which go to show their unique value to the economic and statistical world, and the opportuneness of their present collection and publication.

Those who had interested themselves in the recent de velopment of economic science, whether on its theoretic, statistic, or administrative sides, must have been well aware that it received a severe check by the lamented death of Mr. Jevons in August 1882. But probably only a few of his more intimate friends were conscious of the full extent of their loss. For some years, Mr. Jevons had been concen trating himself with ever-increasing interest and intensity upon his economic studies. His book on the State in Relation to Labour was one indication of the new lines of inquiry on which he was entering, and was full of promise of the important service his eminently wise and healthy judg ment might have rendered in the treatment of the difficult social problems which now press for solution.