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2 ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDIES
which he was held here for his knowledge of economic
statistics, especially trade and banking statistics, and
his skill in using them. He was remarkable not merely
as a statistician, but as a man of business and as an
economist, and his special forte as a statistician was to
throw light on problems connected with the theory of
business-especially banking-and on the applications
of political economy to the real world by means of
statistics. In labours of this kind he was among the
first in the field. Mr. Tooke, whom he recogni,ed as
a master, had preceded him as a pioneer, showing the
way to reason out disputed points in the theory of
currency and banking by statistical illustrations from
actual business experience: his demonstrations on such
points as the dependence of prices on credit, and the
fact of a rise of prices preceding and not succeeding
the expansion of a paper currency, being still among
the. best examples of the right use of statistics in eco-
nomic discussions. But Mr. N ewmarch followed in the
steps of his great master with a command of facts, and
a power of analyzing and grouping figures, which in
the same field were at that time without example. His
most signal achievement was the preparation of the
last two volumes of the "History of Prices," a book
well known here, though it has been long out of print.
The information and .comments in those two volumes
on the great economic changes about the middle of
the present century, including the introduction of free
trade, the Bank Charter Act, the Irish famine, the
French revolution of 1848-51, the gold discoveries
in Russia, California, and Australia, and finally the
Crimean war, make them still a most valuable record;
while the discussion on many points of banking prac-
tice and economic theory, especially on all points re-
lating to the use and abuse of credit, and the periodicity
of movements in trade, remains to this day the fullest
exposition on these topics to which the student can be
referred. There are better books perhaps on single
points, sucJ:l as Mr. Bagehot's II Lombard Street," in