The most accomplished and the ablest of living economists, Professor
Cairnes, died on Thursday morning, at the age of fifty- -one, after a most lingering and painful illness of several years. He was, however, much more than an economist, a politician of very great breadth and grasp of thought. His book on "The Slave Power" did more, at the time of the American Civil War, to turn the intel- lectual elements in English society against the South than any other literary effort of the period. The only bit of political mis- chief which, in our opinion, he ever did, was the use of his great influence amongst Liberal Members to overthrow Mr. Gladstone's Irish University Bill in 1873. His was a most realistic and graphic, as well as a most logical mind, and no one who studied his works was ever tempted to think that phrases were an adequate substitute for things, or to use glibly formulae to which he could assign no concrete interpretation. His type of mind was even better suited to the successful study of political economy than that of his friend, John Stuart Mill himself, who, with his usual gene- rosity, was the first to recognise Professor Cairnes's higher power. Though he had long been an invalid, his intellectual influence was exerted, and exerted powerfully, almost up to the last day of his life.
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