The opening piece of the April number by Francis A. Walker, is an interesting argument on the proposition that the source of business profits is in the intellectual abilities of each business man himself, that the more successful any man may be in business schemes and in business transactions, the larger will his profits be. Mr. Walker makes profits analogous to rent. Rent is the difference between the productive power of any given lot of land and the worst piece of land that it pays to cultivate; and so profit is the difference between the net assets of any business firm and the surplus of an employer of the lowest possible grade obtained with the same amount of capital and goods. And this surplus must be due to the superior ability of the man himself, since in the same town with the same amount of capital one man will clear more in a year than another at the same trade. This then being established, Mr. Walker claims that it is logically true to say that those men who simply clear expenses each year ought to be the employed and not the employers, since they are using up the capital invested in their business without gaining, as the other better business managers do, a certain profit each year. Their capital should be put into better hands and they be the employed. But in the practical world some such good business men as the directors of the Standard Oil Co., would offer reasons for arguing strongly on the side of the small capitalists, in spite of Mr. Walker.

"An Historical Study of Law's system" is the title of the second article written by Mr. A. McF. Davis. It consists of an exhaustive discussion of the facts concerning the famous Banque Generale. It seems a singular freak of Providence that Sieur Law, the son of a Scotch goldsmith, should have been the man to suggest a way to help the French government out of financial shipwreck, in the early part of the eighteenth century. Law spent the early part of his life in roaming about Europe gambling and duelling and all the time turning over in his brain scheme after scheme for revolutionizing the financial world by introducing a credit system different from any then known. Finally he persuaded France that what she needed was the confidence of the people, and to bring this into life he proposed his bank which had for its fundamental principles the three following truths: First; - That all materials suitable for coinage may be made into money - Second - That the abundance of money is the condition on which depend labor, husbandry and population. - Third. That paper is more suitable than metals for a circulating medium.

Finally in 1716 after much dispute and hesitation, letters patent were granted him and from that time the Banque Generale, or as it was later called, the Banque Royal kept continually increasing in power. And all this was due to one man's exertions.

Mr. Laughlin in the third article discusses the ever doubtful question of the status of gold since 1873. To the many who say that it has risen, the article shows a few of the complications which have to be considered, as whether prices have not varied and gold remained the same; whether silver has not changed its ratio. Perhaps the most correct statement of the case is that all these forces have had an influence and that the proportion which each has taken in the struggle is practically beyond calculation. The article puts the facts before its readers in a clear and intelligible manner which are made still clearer by numerous tables.

The rest of the number is composed of notes and memoranda, making as a whole a very interesting and instructive issue of the journal.