It now remains to complete this sketch of the growth of political economy by a brief account of the writers on the Continent and in the United States, beginning with France. About the time of the founding of the London “Economist” (1844) and “The Statistical Journal” (1839) in England, there was established in Paris the “Journal des Économistes” (1842), which contains many valuable papers. On the whole, the most popular writer since J. B. Say has been Bastiat,(56) who aspired to be the French Cobden. He especially urged a new(57) view of value, which he defined as the relation established by an exchange of services; that nature’s products are gratuitous, so that man can not exact anything except for a given service. Chiefly as a foe of protection, which he regarded as qualified socialism, he has won a reputation for popular and clever writing; and he was led to believe in a general harmony of interests between industrial classes; but in general he can not be said to have much influenced the course of French thought. On value, rent, and population, he is undoubtedly unsound. A writer of far greater depth than Bastiat, with uncommon industry and wide knowledge, was Michel Chevalier,(58) easily the first among modern French economists. He has led in the discussion upon the fall of gold, protection, banking, and particularly upon money; an ardent free-trader, he had influence enough to induce France to enter into the commercial treaty of 1860 with England. One of the ablest writers on special topics is Levasseur,(59) who has given us a history of the working-classes before and since the Revolution, and the best existing monograph on John Law. The most industrious and reliable of the recent writers is the well-known statistician, Maurice Block,(60) while less profound economists were J. A. Blanqui(61) and Wolowski.(62) The latter devoted himself enthusiastically to banks of issue, and bimetallism. A small group gave themselves up chiefly to studies on agriculture and land-tenures—H. Passy,(63) Laveleye, and Lavergne.(64) The latter is by far the most important, as shown by his “L’économie rurale de la France depuis 1789” (1857), which gives a means of comparing recent French agriculture with that before the Revolution, as described in Arthur Young’s “Travels in France” (1789). The best systematic treatise in French is the “Précis de la science économique” (1862), by Antoine-Élise Cherbuliez,(65) a Genevan. The French were the first to produce an alphabetical encyclopædia of economics, by Coquelin and Guillaumin, entitled the “Dictionnaire de l’économie politique” (1851-1853, third edition, 1864). Courcelle-Seneuil,(66) by his “Traité théorique et pratique d’économie politique” (second edition, 1867); and Baudrillart, by a good compendium. Joseph Garnier, Dunoyer,(67) Paul Leroy-Beaulieu,(68) Reybaud,(69) De Parieu,(70) Léon Say,(71) Boiteau, and others, have done excellent work in France, and Walras(72) in Switzerland.