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1:2 ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDIES
thing to be taken for granted ; but Mr. Williams and
any authors of like proposals should give us their idea
of what prices are to be got, what guarantees there are
to be for them, and why it is thought they can be got
daily, or weekly, or monthly, or whatever may be the
period fixed for changing the index number.
The only practical index number that has yet been
tried, I think, is that of the Corn Returns, on which the
tithe average is fixed, and the corresponding fiars prices
in Scotland. Here the prices are derived from returns
of actual transactions on an extensive scale, and, for
fixing the tithe average in England. the prices are the
average of the sales of a year over the whole country.
To get rid of all inequalities this immense labour is
undergone. Finally, while the price for each year is
fixed in this way, a farther attempt to get rid of in-
equality is made by arranging for the payment of the
tithe on a septennial average-the average in each
year of the prices of the seven years previous. In
Scotland the fiars prices are settled by a kind of judicial
investigation in each county annually. Now, what is to
be the procedure when an official index number is
published, embracing perhaps fifty or a hundred com-
modities, and when the index number is to be varied
not annually as in the case of the tithe, but monthly as
Jevons proposed, and daily as Mr. Williams proposes?
Are the prices to be the average of actual sales, or
what; and what basis is to be considered sufficient?
In considering .the question of a measure for deferred
payments, along with the Committee of the British
Association, I suggested a procedure resembling that
followed in the case of the Corn Returns and the tithe
average,.giving the department power to obtain returns
of actual sales, and having in view an extensive mass
of transactions, and an index number to be varied only
at long intervals, such as a year. Even to provide an
index number for such a purpose was difficult enough
in my judgment, but at the notion of a daily index
number I stand aghast.