Be that as it may, we can hardly pretend to be satisfied with the position of our country in this matter of doctrinal history. Of the nine names mentioned in the Preface, only two are English, namely, Ashley and Ingram; and it is no disparagement to Ashley’s illuminating study of mediæval England to say that the main interest of his work is not doctrinal, and that Cunningham’s name might with equal appropriateness have been included in the list. Omitting both Ashley and Cunningham, whose labours have been largely confined to the realm of economic history, we are thus left with Ingram’s short but learned work as the sole contribution of English scholarship to the history of economic thought. English readers may possibly be puzzled by the omission of any references, except a stray quotation or two, to Cannan’s _History of the Theories of Production and Distribution_. But the microscopic care with which the earlier theories are examined and elucidated in that work have resulted in its being regarded as a most valuable contribution to economic theory itself, and under the circumstances the absence of any reference to it in the Preface is not altogether surprising. Our apparent indifference to the development which theory has undergone in the course of the last 150 years is all the more difficult to explain when we recall the fact that England has always been the classic home of theory, both orthodox and socialist, and our backwardness in this respect contrasts very unfavourably with the progress made in the kindred study of economic history during the last twenty-five years under the inspiration of writers like Ashley, Cunningham, Maitland, Round, and Seebohm. Most critics are by this time agreed that Ingram’s work, lucid and learned though it is, is somewhat marred by being written too exclusively from the standpoint of a Positivist philosopher who thought he saw in the rapid rise of the Historical school an indisputable proof of the soundness of the Comtean principles and a presage of their ultimate triumph. Complete impartiality in the writing of history, even were it attainable, may not be altogether desirable, and the present authors have hastened to disclaim any such qualification. Notwithstanding this, some of their readers will possibly feel that certain French schools, both ancient and modern, have been dealt with at disproportionate length, and that scarcely enough attention has been paid to certain English and American writers. But it will surely do us little harm occasionally “to see ourselves as others see us.”