Principles of political economy

THE fact that Professor Gide's "Principes d'Economie Politique" has gone through eight editions in the original French, and been translated into the Russian, Swedish, Polish, Dutch, Finnish, Spanish, and Bohemian languages, furnishes presumptive evidence of its usefulness. The first English translation, published in 1889, has been very widely used in England and America as a college text-book, despite numerous features of this translation which placed it at a disadvantage when compared with other text-books designed to supply practically the same need. These features have been pointed out from time to time by benevolent critics; but the continued. extensive use of the book with classes in political economy led the publishers to conclude that a new edition, without the objectionable features, and adapted more closely to the needs of college classes in economics, would find an even wider accept ance than the first English translation.

The successive French editions of the work have undergone numerous and important changes,-changes not so much in the general scope and spirit of the book as in the manner of presenting certain sections of the subject. The fundamental purpose has remained precisely the same: to give the reader a plain statement of the accepted principles of economics, a summary of the unsettled problems of the science, and a clear, brief, and impartial outline of the various solutions that have been proposed.