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THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL

MARCH, 1891

THE BRITISH ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION

The British Economic Association is open to all schools and parties; no person is excluded because of his opinions. The Economic Journal, issued under the uthority of the Ass6cition, will be conducted in a similar spirit of toleration. It will be open to writers of different schools. The most opposite doctrines may meet here as on a fair field. Thus the difficulties of Socialism will be considered in the first number; the difficulties of Individualism in the second. Opposing theories of currency will be represented with equal impartiality. Nor will it be attempted to prescribe the method, any more than the result, of scientific investigation.

Is it extravagant to hope that this toleration of the differences between the votaries of economic science may tend to produce agreement between them? 'A little generous prudence, a little forbearance for one another,... might win all these diligences to join and unite into one general and brotherly search for truth.' What Milton hoped for theology in the seventeenth century may prove true of political economy in the nineteenth.

Meanwhile, it will be the task of the Editor and his coadjutors, unbiassed by their personal convictions, to select the ablest representatives of each important interest. The Association is to be not only 'British' in its love of fair play and free speech, but

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