the revival of the tax on foreign heirs in Louisiana. Moreover, progressive inheritance taxes have been adopted in five Canadian provinces, and authorized by constitutional amendment in Minnesota. During the same time the constitutionality of inheritance taxes has been upheld by the supreme courts of Massachusetts, Maine and Tennessee. The Michigan tax was held not to comply with a special requirement of the state constitution; but the only serious set-back recently encountered was in Ohio, where the progressive tax on direct heirs was annulled by a far-fetched interpretation of the state constitution. The progressive principle was held to conflict with the following section in the bill of rights: "All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for their equal protection and benefit."

Mr. Dos Passos points out that the original Pennsylvania statute of 1826 was a vast improvement upon its English model of those days, in that it applied to both real and personal property; but in the matter of exemptions, both to direct heirs and to institutions, he declares the American laws "insuperably inferior" to the English system of to-day. Nevertheless, his account of the English death duties is inadequate and misleading. Even the American laws are not stated without some inaccuracies. It is scarcely correct, for example, to say that the inheritance tax was not applied in New York until "more than sixty years after its successful adoption in Pennsylvania and other states "; that it is in force at present in North Carolina; that it has been "put in force . . . by constitutional provision in Minnesota "; that the constitution of that state was "immediately amended" upon the annulment of the old law; or that the Delaware tax, in its present status, is "graduated from one to five per cent." Again, it is misleading, at least, to mention the Australian colonies among the places in which the tax has most "recently been inaugurated."

The greater part of the book is, of course, devoted to questions of legal interpretation. Recent legal decisions have reaffirmed the principle that the inheritance tax is not a tax upon the property involved, but is upon the privilege of succession. It is therefore not subject to the same constitutional restrictions as property taxes, and it is even applicable to United States bonds, which could be reached by the taxing power of the commonwealths in no other way. It also follows that a commonwealth may tax legacies to the United States government. The same legal principle seems to lead up naturally to the theory which regards the inheritance tax as a payment for definite

services rendered by the state. This, at any rate, is the theory accepted by Mr. Dos Passos.

Looking into the future, the author foresees a continued extension of this form of taxation. Three times he confidently predicts that it will soon be in force in all the states of the Union. He recommends it as a most desirable substitute for "the odious tax on personal property"; and he is favorably inclined toward the adoption of progressive rates.

The proof-reading is atrocious in some places; but John Stuart Mill is so consistently referred to as "Mills" that one doubts whether the fault is all in the proof-reading. The reader is frequently tempted to wish that all lawyers would follow Mr. Stimson's excellent example and devote their leisure to literary pursuits, so that they might use good English when writing law.

WASHINGTON, D. C.

MAX WEST.

Cours Élémentaire de Statistique Administrative. Élaboration des Statistiques - Organisation des Bureaux de Statistique — Éléments de Démographie. Par le Docteur JACQUES BERTILLON, Chef des Travaux Statistiques de la Ville de Paris. Paris, Société d'Éditions Scientifiques, 1895.599 pp.

In 1889 the superior council of statistics in France expressed the wish that statistics might be made a part of the examination for entrance to certain administrative offices. The plan was approved by the minister of commerce, and was acted upon favorably by several bureaus, but there was no text-book. To fill the gap the volume before us was prepared, and it naturally corresponds as closely as possible to the program of subjects recommended by the council. It describes minutely the various bureaus of statistics in France; the various schedules used and the methods of filling them; the methods of tabulating the primary figures, of casting percentages, averages and totals, and of arranging, classifying, verifying and illustrating by graphical methods the results. The material is treated very elaborately, as befits the purpose of the book, but it is not done at all perfunctorily. Constant comparison is made with foreign bureaus, certain defects of the French system are sharply criticised, and many suggestions are given in regard to statistical method. There are also a definition of statistical science, a summary history of statistics, and a résumé of the chief facts in regard to population (démographie). It is, thus, far more than a mere cram

book for candidates for the civil service. It will undoubtedly take a place in the literature of statistics, and will be useful to the general student as well as to the persons for whom it was primarily intended. It is less elaborate on the practical side than Levasseur's La Population Française, and on the theoretical, than von Mayr's Statistik und Socialwissenschaft; but in some respects it is keener than the former and more realistic than the latter of those valuable works.

The close student of statistics, if he can face (or ignore) the somewhat formidable mass of office schedules and administrative instructions, will, I think, find his profit in this book in two directions. It will enable him to verify the trustworthiness of French statistics so far as that can be done by a knowledge of the way they originate. This is no small gain; for such knowledge, though often desired, is generally inaccessible to the ordinary student. M. Bertillon's book is perhaps somewhat encyclopedic in this respect; but similar works for other countries, especially England and the United States, where there is such diversity of statistical material, would be very welcome. In the second place, by ignoring the administrative "rubbish," the student will be able, as noted above, to exhume a very suggestive treatise on statistical method.

Owing to the character and purpose of the book, critical comment on the strictly scientific parts of it seems out of place. M. Bertillon probably introduced as much "science" as he thought profitable or possible. Certain parts of the "Démographie," however, are decidedly defective. For instance, criminal statistics, for which France has been so famous, are disposed of in two pages. Again, the feeble birth-rate in France is clearly exposed and its consequences deplored, but no explanation is given for it.

M. Bertillon lays great stress upon la vie normale. This is that age where the absolute number of deaths is greatest, and it falls between 70 and 75 years. Leaving out the period of infancy, the number of deaths increases up to that age, and then, owing to the small number of survivors, falls off. We may term this age, M. Bertillon says, the normal length of life, as being the period which the greatest number just attain; it may be likened to a point on the target about which the shots group themselves in such a way as to convince us that a definite effort has been made to hit that particular center. All this seems to me dangerously analogous to Quetelet's l'homme moyen, a conception which M. Bertillon has already repudiated. The whole matter has been explained by King (Life Contingencies, p. 29) as concerned with that year of age in which the life is most likely to

fail. After age 1 the number of deaths is greatest during the year 73 to 74; and therefore the most probable year of death for all persons aged between 2 and 73 is the age 73 to 74. But this does not make it the normal lifetime. The figure has no such value or interest as M. Bertillon attributes to it. RICHMOND MAYO-SMITH.

Cours d'Économie Politique. Par VILFREDO PARETO. Tome Premier. Lausanne, F. Rouge, 1896.430 pp.

This work is comprehensive in its scope, since it is to include, when complete, a treatment of pure economics, of applied economics and of economic organization, embracing the evolution and the functions of industrial society, with a concluding book on distribution and consumption. The present volume discusses the first two of these subjects. The writer is catholic in his affiliations. Retaining concepts of classical origin, such as the notion that capital originates in consumers' goods used for the support of producers, he blends them with concepts derived from recent Austrian studies, such as the resolving of loans into exchanges of present goods for future goods.

The definitions show originality. The term utility, for example, has its ambiguities; and Professor Pareto substitutes the word ophélimité, meaning capacity to satisfy any want, whether rational or irrational. One variety of capital, he argues, is the personal, consisting of laboring men. Savings, however, are not capital, but can be transmuted into it. It is in connection with this distinction that he makes the most interesting study in this volume.

The author says that savings are consumers' goods. They may be loaned to a consumer who will simply use them up, or they may be loaned to a producer who will make them over to laborers and so transmute them into capital. There is a rate of pay for the loan of savings; but this does not depend entirely on the productivity of capital, for some savings are lent to consumers for direct use.

This conception of savings as not identical with capital might suggest the existence of two independent funds, continuing side by side. A reader might suppose that the author meant to imply that society possesses a stock of productive instruments, including tools, buildings, raw materials, etc., and also a second stock of usable goods, held in storage and waiting to be dealt out to laborers. It is impossible that this should be his meaning, for no such storing of usable goods actually takes place. The consumable articles in mer

chants' shops are, in a sense, incomplete until they are sold. They are the shopkeeper's raw materials. When they are sold, however, the consuming process begins. Particular articles for consumption that fall within the category of savings have no duration in that condition. In the prevalent nomenclature, they are the merchant's capital till they become the laborer's wages. Yet, in the author's view, savings are let for hire, although they are not capital. The rate of payment for the use of savings depends partly, but not wholly, on the productivity of capital.

What is proved by this study is the fact that the problem of interest cannot be solved by a mere study of capital goods. Business men think of capital as a permanent sum, expressible in terms of money, but not consisting of money. By a figure of speech they call interest a payment for the use of "money." By a different dialectical process Professor Pareto resolves the payment for loans into a compensation for the use of savings. In both cases something figures in the interest problem besides particular tools and materials concretely conceived.

J. B. CLARK.

Das Einkommen und seine Vertheilung. Von Dr. FRIEDRICH KLEINWAECHTER. Leipzig, C. L. Hirschfeld, 1896.—352 pp.

Dr. Kleinwächter's work constitutes the fifth volume of the Handund Lehrbuch der Staatswissenschaften in Selbständigen Bänden. It treats the general subject of distribution in a thorough and comprehensive manner. For a German work the style is remarkably clear and simple, the explanations are full and the illustrations are numerous and well chosen; so that even the beginner need have no difficulty in understanding the author's treatment of this most difficult department of political economy. In fact, if any criticism were ventured upon the manner of presentation, it would be that in some places the author is a trifle prolix in illustration. Why should it be necessary to choose a single example to devote two pages and a half to the distinction which everybody sees at a glance between nominal and real wages (Geld- und Naturallohn)?

The English-speaking reader is at a disadvantage in not having in general use an equivalent of the word Einkommen, as it is used by the author. While it is manifest that he discusses precisely the same question which American writers have discussed under the title of the distribution of wealth, it is equally evident that the German expression is in some respects preferable. It is not the