impossible for him to discharge his public duties; he resigned his post in 1872, and retired with the honorary title of professor emeritus of political economy. In 1873 his own university conferred on him the degree of LL.D. He died at Blackheath, near London, on 8 July 1875. Family Cairnes, on 27 November 1860, married Elizabeth ("Eliza") Charlotte Alexander (maiden; 1838–1896) in Galway at the St. Nicholas Collegiate Church. She was a daughter of George Henry Minto Alexander (1811–1853), a Judge of the High Court in India. John and Eliza Cairnes had four children, a daughter and three sons, one being William Elliot Cairnes (1862–1902), an officer and writer. John and Eliza named their second son, Robert Gould Cairnes (1863–1868), after Robert Gould Shaw (1837–1863), a Union Army Civil War hero. Work The last years of Cairnes' life were spent in the collection and publication of some scattered papers contributed to various reviews and magazines, and in the preparation of his most extensive and important work. The Political Essays, published in 1873, comprise all his papers relating to Ireland and its university system, together with some other articles of a somewhat similar nature. The Essays in Political Economy, Theoretical and Applied, which appeared in the same year, contain the essays towards a solution of the gold question, brought up to date and tested by comparison with statistics of prices. Among the other articles in the volume the more important are the criticisms on Frédéric Bastiat and Auguste Comte, and the essays on Political Economy and Land, and on Political Economy and Laissez-Faire, which have been referred to above. In 1874 appeared his largest work, Some Leading Principles of Political Economy, newly Expounded, which is beyond doubt a worthy successor to the great treatises of Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill. It does not expound a completed system of political economy; many important doctrines are left untouched; and in general the treatment of problems is not such as would be suited for a systematic manual. The work is essentially a commentary on some of the principal doctrines of the English school of economists, such as value, cost of production, wages, labour and capital, and international values, and is replete with keen criticism and lucid illustration. While in fundamental harmony with Mill, especially as regards the general conception of the science, Cairnes differs from him to a greater