Professor Ashley's Lecture.

In Sever 11 last evening Professor Ashley gave a lecture on the study of economic history. He made a plea for an examination of the facts of history as a basis for all economical reasoning He thought that speculation which had only few facts as foundation could not but be mistakeable, and that a wider and deeper knowledge of facts was the one thing needed to set our reasoning aright. Facts are not everything, but they are a great deal, and without them a student has no material with which to do his mental building. It is to the credit of Harvard that she was first among the universities to recognize this double aspect of economical study, and to provide for both. Professor Ashley said his advice to a student would be to acquire the outlines of economical theory as it is today, and to study the growth of that theory from Adam Smith to the present time. Then if he had a special adaptation for abstruse reasoning, to try his hand at this; but, if not, to devote himself to economic history, and try to explain present facts by analogy with past facts. He cited Charles Booth's book as an example of study on the conditions of manhood, with practical suggestions for the relief of distress, which did not pretend to go into theory which should settle all possible problems. Certainly this slow yet practical method has more promise in it, than the theorizing which attempts to settle all things at one sweep.

Just as ecclesiastical and legal history have come to be separated from history proper, so it is only a question of time when economic history will be assigned a sphere for itself.

The Anglo-Saxon mind has always shown a particular reverence for the past, and a marked tendency to consider the establishment of an institution good reason for a continuance of its maintenance and it is therefore likely that students of Anglo-Saxon origin will enter into such a study with especially keen zest.