districts against the new poor law, and though | he had repaid all but a small portion of a debt which he owed Mr. Thornhill, he was, two years after his dismissal, thrown into the Fleet Prison (9th December 1840) for this remainder. Here he edited a journal called the Fleet Papers, devoted to the discussion of factory and poor-law questions. He remained in prison till his friends, including John Walter of the Times, W. B. Ferrand, M.P., John Fielden, M.P., and other well-known factory reformers, got up an "Oastler Liberation Fund" amounting to £3000 to pay his debt (£500 only) and other expenses. He was liberated in 1844, and made a triumphant public entry into Huddersfield, 20th February. He continued his labours as a reformer till the passing of the Ten Hours Act of 1847, but afterwards retired to a small cottage, "South Hill," at Guildford in Surrey, where he lived in poverty and seclusion till his death at Harrogate (22nd August 1861).

Oastler's claim to notice lies in his activity as a reformer of the worst evils of factory life, in spite of bitter opposition. In his opinions he was a protectionist, and opposed the new poor law. A statue was erected to his memory (1869), at Bradford, Yorks, the scene of many of his labours, but he is now almost entirely forgotten by the working classes to whom he gave his life.

[No proper biography of Oastler exists, but one or two sketches of his life have been issued: cp. Sketch of the Life and Opinions of Richard Castler (Hobson: Leeds, 1838, many years before his death); Taylor's Biographia Leodiensis, pp. 499-503; The History of the Factory Movement by "Alfred" (the pseudonym of Samuel Kydd), London, 1857, gives as good an account of him as any other book, with many extracts from his speeches; and there is a fair biography in the Dictionary of National Biography (Smith Elder, 1895); cp. also Gibbins' English Social Reformers, (Methuen, London, 1892). Oastler issued numerous controversial letters and pamphlets, now forgotten, and besides The Fleet Papers (1841-44), edited a weekly paper devoted to the factory workers' cause, called The Home (May 1851 to June 1855).] H. de B. G.

OBJECTIVE EXCHANGE VALUE.

VALUE.

See

OBLIGATIO is a legal relation by which a determinate person has a legal claim against another determinate person to some act or forbearance on his part reducible to a pecuniary value. Such a relation may arise either from contract, quasi-contract, delict, or quasi-delict.

E. A. W.

OBLIGATION. By the older writers on English law, the term "obligation" is used in a restricted sense. It denotes simply a bond under seal, with a money penalty. But now it is used in the wider sense of the Roman lawyers, who employed the term as correlative to jus in personam. An obligation is the legal tie (juris vinculum), whereby one person is bound to

OBRECHT, GEORGE (1547-1612), the son of a syndic, mayor, of the city of Strasburg, studied law in Tubingen and in France, where he narrowly escaped death during the massacres of protestants at the time of the Saint Bartholomew. He was a celebrated professor of law in his native town, where the gymnasium founded by Johann Sturm. in 1538, developed (1621) into a university, and became, after the decay of the Saxon universities, a flourishing centre of academical learning very much under the influence of learned Frenchmen, especially of BODIN (q.v.).

Obrecht's economic writings were, after his death, privately printed in 1617 by his son. They were only published in 1644 under the title of Funff underschiedliche Secreta Politica They bear strong evidence of the influence of Bodin; thus Obrecht maintains that the property and not the persons of the subjects ought to be assessed, and that necessaries ought never to be taxed. At the same time, Obrecht remained free from any leanings to the mercantile school. He insisted on an honest monetary policy, as well as on the usefulness of population statistics, but under this last respect with fiscal,

rather than scientific aims.

In imitation of Bodin, who himself had been influenced by the existence in Italy of institutions founded to endow young girls at the time of their majority, Obrecht suggests the foundation of an Aerarium Liberorum extended to children of both sexes, in which parents would be obliged to effect a deposit at the time of the birth; the deposit was to bear a yearly interest of per cent, which being capitalised, the whole was to be repaid to the children at the age of twenty-one for the sons, and seventeen for the daughters. But here also, fiscal prepossessions were lurking under the appearance of a provident system, for in case of death in the interval, the larger part of the collected money was to accrue to the public treasury.

Obrecht has been considered as a striking personification of his time, but not in advance of it

(Roscher, Geschichte der Nat. Oekonomik in Deutschland, pp. 150-158). For his standing as a jurist, see Stintzing, Geschichte der deutschen Rechtswissenschaft, vol. i. pp. 672-676, who also mentions that in 1617 an unauthorised and spurious edition of the Secreta Politica appeared in Rostock (1617) under the title of Oeconomia Institutionum Obrechtiana.

E. Ca.

OBSERVATION AND EXPERIMENT. Every science is founded on experience. The scientific inquirer either may take experience as it comes to him, casually, or he may make experience for himself. In the former case he

30.

learns by observation, in the latter he learns by experiment. Observation is our ordinary, and in some branches of science our only, resource, but experiment, where it is possible, affords a more direct access to knowledge. For if the student conducts his experiment in a scientific spirit, he knows all the conditions which can affect the result, whereas, when he merely observes, he can be far less certain that his observation has been exhaustive. The phenomena of nature are so complex and so interdependent that they usually admit of a variety of explanations, and even protracted and careful observation may not afford the crucial instances which would enable the inquirer to reject all the explanations which are unsound. At the same time observation and experiment are not to be regarded as distinct methods. Experiment is but a means of extending the field of observation.

In economic research both observation and experiment are attended with peculiar difficulties. The aid of experiment is rarely available. The close relation between economic phenomena and other elements of human welfare usually forbids the production of economic phenomena at will. Even when an economic experiment is tried, it is usually tried under circumstances which deprive it of most of its scientific value. An employer may introduce an eight hours' day in his works, or a board of guardians may suppress outdoor relief, and the results of either of those experiments may afford valuable information. The change may be made so rapidly as to produce its effect before the conditions, which may be comparatively simple, can be appreciably altered. Yet even in cases such as these we can by no means exclude the action of the plurality of causes. The workman whose day of labour is experimentally shortened may have a peculiarly strong motive to efficiency which might disappear if the reduction of hours had received the sanction of law or custom. The suppression of outdoor relief in one union may give idle and thriftless persons a motive for flitting into other unions. When we pass to innovations of wider scope, we find ourselves still more remote from the conditions of scientific experiment. The effects of an important law or a far-reaching invention are inextricably mingled with the effects of many other causes. That the effects of steampower or of a policy of free trade have been immense, nobody will deny. But how much of our present economic state is due to the one or the other no one will attempt to describe with absolute accuracy. Many other potent causes have co-operated in producing our modern economic order, and the effects are inextricably blended and interfused. We may say, therefore, that experiments sufficiently accurate to satisfy the standard set by physical inquirers are practically impossible in political economy.

The

Observation, therefore, is almost the sole means of obtaining the knowledge of facts required by the economist. But observation, as a source of scientific knowledge, labours under two distinct disadvantages, the plurality of causes and the intermixture of effects. same phenomenon may have been produced in different instances by different combinations of causes. And again the effects of many causes may be intermixed in the one phenomenon. Both of these disadvantages may be experienced in attempting the same economic observation. They may be partially overcome by enlarging the field of observation as widely as possible. But even then the observation which is most fruitful for economics "is in the main not observation of complex economic facts, but of elementary economic forces and the conditions under which they operate. It is by the agency of those forces that complex economic facts are built up" (Keynes, Scope and Method of Political Economy, p. 166). Thus little can be done by mere collection of instances towards ascertaining the respective effects of such forces, for example, as free trade and protection. Nor can the "personal error" of the observer be eliminated as in cases where more exact methods of "justifying" observation are possible.

Whether observation is complete or not, it cannot be carried out satisfactorily without the aid of theory, and the theory may require much modification after its first inception. When a theory clashes with a fact it must be modified or abandoned, but a new theory must inevitably take its place. Students of economic history who come into collision with theories derived from the experience of one age, and too hastily applied to explain the facts of another, are apt to forget that theorising is both inevitable and beneficial. Whether they are aware

of it or not they are themselves theorists. For economic history involves, over and above the accumulation of facts, some criterion of the importance of those facts, and some scheme for their arrangement which must be supplied by the mind of the historian.

Yet the economist enjoys an advantage in observation which may be turned to good account. A student of human action, and himself a human being, "he starts with a knowledge of ultimate causes " (Cairnes, Logical Method of Political Economy, p. 75). The student of physical science does not possess this advantage. The man in the street knows why mankind desire riches. But the most profound inquirers took thousands of years to discover the nature of the forces which keep the earth in its orbit. The economist must indeed remember that human nature, whilst almost unchangeable in its primary attributes, is infinitely variable in its secondary manifestations. Inference from his own nature to the nature of other men is dangerous no doubt, but it is very helpful.

The economist may therefore proceed deductively so long as he is careful to test his results by recorded experience. Observation of external facts is rather the corrective than the basis of his studies. On account of this peculiarity of economics, a substitute for experience may, as CAIRNES remarks, be found in the construction of hypothetical cases. In political economy hypothesis "is never used as a help towards the discovery of ultimate causes and laws; just as in physical investigation it is never used as a substitute for experiment" (Logical Method, p. 84). It is only right to add that we should never forget the abstract character of the results obtained in this manner.

[Mill, System of Logic, bk. vi.-On the Logic of the Moral Sciences and Essays on some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy.-Venn, Empirical Logic.-Cairnes, Logical Method of Political Economy.-Bagehot, Economic Studies.— Keynes, Scope and Method of Political Economy.— Sidgwick, Principles of Political Economy.-Marshall, Principles of Economics.-Cunningham, The Relativity of Economic Doctrine (Economic Journal, vol. ii.).—Cliffe Leslie, Essays in Political and Moral Philosophy.-Jevons, The Principles of Science, 1st ed., 1874.]

F. C. M.

OCCUPATION. In Roman law the (OccuPATIO) taking possession of a thing that belonged to nobody with the intention of becoming owner of it gave the occupier the right of ownership. In this way ownership could be acquired over wild animals or derelict property. The doctrine has descended to modern law, and in England has been applied to the capture of wild animals, the appropriation of free natural elements, the collection of substances from the sea or shore, and the severance of articles from trees or from the soil. Probably it would also be applied to the finding of a thing which has been absolutely abandoned by, or has become irrecoverably lost to, its former owner. Pollock and Wright's Possession in the Common Law, Oxford, 1888. In Roman law, however, there was no property in game.

See

The doctrine was applied to a limited extent in the case of real property. If A were granted an estate for the life of B and A died before B, the first person to occupy the land could retain it until B's death. This was abolished by 29 Car. II. c. 3, § 12; 14 Geo. II. c. 20, 89; and the 7 Will. IV. and 1 Vict. c. 26, §§ 3, 6. The doctrine has also been applied to support the appropriation of new countries by European states. Discovery followed by occupation was considered to give a good title.

[For an account of the Roman law doctrine, see Hunter's Roman Law, London, 1892; and for its

31

application in international law, see Maine's Ancient Law, London, 1886, and Phillimore's Int. Law, London, 1879-1889.]

J. E. C. M. OCHR-EL-GUERCH. The smallest denomination of the Egyptian currency, as reorganised by the Khedivial decree of the 14th November 1885, is the Ochr-el-Guerch, ten of which are equal to a piastre; while 100 piastres make an Egyptian pound, the standard of value. Five coins bear the name Ochr-el-Guerch, as follows:

Nickel 5 Ochr-el-Guerch | Bronze Ochr-el-Guerch

OCTROL* France and (under the name of dazii interni di consumo) Italy are now the only countries where octrois or taxation of urban consumption play a prominent part in local finance. They began to spread in France during the 14th century, and as they required a royal concession or octroi, the kings always stipulated that their treasury should take a share of the proceeds one half from 1663. Suppressed with all other indirect taxes in 1791, they were reestablished for Paris in 1799 under the designation of octroi municipal et de bienfaisance, and the provincial municipalities were empowered to do the same by a general law of the following year (loi de frimaire, An VIII.); they have been several times the object of general legislation, especially in 1814, 1816, 1871, and 1884. In a general way, octroi duties are only allowed on (1) drinks; (2) eatables (wheat, flour, bread, and colonial produce, already liable to customs, excepted); (3) fuel; (4) fodder; (5) building materials, with legally fixed maximum rates graduated and rising with the number of the population. They may not assume the character of a local protectionist tariff, nor of a toll on transit and transports. To prevent contraband, smaller communes surrounding a large town may, with the preliminary sanction of government, be made subject to its octroi, but all monies levied on their territory must be paid over to them. A new octroi can only be established by a statute, and every increase of octroi duties must be ratified by the superior authorities. As the state levies taxes on drinks at the entrance of towns, the octroi duties on such may not, without its agreement, exceed those exacted by the state. Until 1855, onetenth of the proceeds was made over to the latter. This forced contribution was then suppressed; since 1881, one-fifth is to be applied to primary education.

Owing to the latitude left within these limits to the 1500 great and small French communes possessing octrois in 1894, and representing together one-third of the population of France, owing to the complexity of local financial wants, of ways of perception (about one-half of the octrois being farmed or managed by the

state), and also of local consumption (varying, | for instance, between wine, cider, and beer), average numbers convey a very inadequate notion of the sums paid per head of urban population, of the proportional cost of collection, etc. Taking the twenty chief towns of France, the cost of collection fluctuates between 5 per cent (Paris) and 14.65 per cent (Bordeaux), the general average being 8.09 per cent. In this respect a considerable improvement has been

Wine (per hectoliter=22 gallons)
Pure alcohol (contained in spirits,
liquors, etc.)

Butcher's meat (per 100 ks. = 222 lbs.)

79.80 9.73

13

10

(£400,000)

14:40

(£112,000)

(£40,000)

(£400,000)

(£104,000)

"

The octroi also collects on wine and alcohol, at their entrance in Paris, a supplementary tax of 8.25 (6s. 10d.) and 186·25 (£7 : 8s.) francs per hectoliter on account of the national revenue, thus burdening the ordinary beverage of the Parisian workman with a total tax equal to the cost of inferior wines when leaving their native vineyards. Objections have often been raised to the principle of an octroi duty, and its abolition demanded; but it would be a very arduous reform to carry out under the actual conditions of French finance, general and local. It would no doubt be feasible in smaller places, but in Paris, where it provides more than one half of the ordinary municipal receipts—145 millions of francs (£5,800,000) out of 267 (£10,680,000), -it seems well-nigh impossible to discover an appropriate substitute, and, invoking the plea of necessity, most French financial economists, though admitting that octrois are an evil, would endorse Prof. Wagner's dictum, that "its maintenance constitutes the financially least objectionable and relatively even the best system (Finanzwissenschaft, iii. p. 915). Still, even those who do not see their way to a radical suppression, demand a mitigation of the dues on the so-called hygienic drinks (wine, beer, and cider), which, to influence retail prices, would, on account of the duties levied for the state, require an agreement between the state and the municipality. This plan is advocated by M. Paul LEROY-BEAULIEU (Economiste Français, 23rd and 30th April 1892, and 10th February 1894). M. Léon SAY is willing to go further than this; he proposed, at a meeting of the Société d'Économie Politique, a general redistribution of general and local, direct and indirect taxation (Journal des Économistes, December 1891, pp. 449-461).

"

The most usual objection to octrois is that they press heavily on the means of urban consumers, especially of the working classes. This objection is undoubtedly valid in Paris as to the dues on drinks, but even including the latter, M. Paul Leroy Beaulieu comes to the conclusion that a working man only pays in Paris 22 or

23 francs (18s. 4d. or 19s. 2d.) for his yearly share; he, besides, enjoys exemption from the tax of 11 per cent on house rent, since he generally pays for himself and family 300 francs (£12), and all house rents under 500 francs (£20) are exonerated (Traité des Finances, i. pp. 735-737). It is not at all certain that this same workman would be appreciably benefited by the suppression of the moderate dues (say 5 per cent) on butcher's meat, butter, and the like articles, the difference between retail and average prices of these articles, when sold by the farmers and rural breeders, being enormous and out of all proportion to the dues. The same difference exists between the price of corn and. the price of bread, both of which are free, and their dearness must be ascribed to bad trade organisation. It should also be noticed that, in Belgium, the abolition of octrois thirty years since produced no marked influence on the price of victuals, at least in large towns like Brussels, Antwerp, and Ghent. The suppres sion of low octroi duties, and a slight reduction of high duties, such as those on wine, would probably be far more beneficial to tradesmen and dealers than to the lower and middle class consumer; the latter would be much more pinched by an increase of the tax on house rents, an increase often pointed out as the financially most promising substitute. The plan followed in Belgium in 1860-the raising customs and excise duties, and paying over the surplus thus obtained as well as a percentage of the postal revenue to the communes,-would bring about the relief of the urban at the partial expense of the far more numerous rural population, which, in the present political state of France, would resent this method of reform. All these considerations render it probable that the total abolition of octrois is not to be expected in France unless in a very remote future. Still the municipality of Lyons has this year (1895) voted the principle of the abolition of its octroi.

Outside France and Italy taxes on urban consumption exist in a few continental towns,

for instance, in Bavaria, and in the chief towns of Austria, but here the "open country" (das flache Land) is also subject to them, although in a lesser degree than the "enclosed towns' (geschlossene Städte). For an instance of Octroi in Glasgow, see Life of Adam Smith, by John Rae, p. 67. [See OCTROI in App.]

Besides the already mentioned works and the leading French treatises on finance, see, among recent works, Guignard, De la Suppression des Octrois.-Carré, Suppression des Octrois de la Ville de Paris. Saint Julien and Bienaimé, Histoire des Droits d'Octroi à Paris.-Lesourd, Législation des Octrois.-Yves Guyot, La Suppression des Octrois (Report to the Chamber of Deputies, 1889).Tramuset, La Réforme de l'Octroi et de l'Impôt des Boissons.-Cohn, Finanzwissenschaft, pp. 647 et seq.-Reitzenstein, Conrad's Jahrbücher, vols. xlii.

ODDY, J. JEPSON (died 1814), merchant; was a member of the RUSSIA and TURKEY or LEVANT COMPANIES.

He wrote European Commerce, etc., London, 1805, 4to, and A Sketch for the improvement as exemplified by the inland navigation of Europe in general and of England in particular, including details relating to the intended Stamford Junction navigation to unite the Eastern with the Midland and Western counties of England, London, 1810, 8vo.

Oddy unsuccessfully stood for parliament for Stamford.

[Gentleman's Magazine, 1814, pt. ii.-M'Culloch's Literature of Political Economy, p. 55.]

ODEL TENURE.

H. E. E.

See UDAL TENURE. OFFICIAL RECEIVER. Under the Bankruptcy Act 1883, certain persons have been appointed by the board of trade "official receivers" of debtors' estates. When a "receiving order" is made for the protection of the debtor's estate, an official receiver thereby becomes receiver of the debtor's property pending the appointment of a trustee.

Under the Companies Winding-up Act 1890, the official receivers have to discharge duties in the winding up of companies similar to those they perform in bankruptcy.

[Robson's Bankruptcy, 1894.-Lindley on Companies, 1891.]

J. E. C. M.

OFFICIAL VALUES. This term was for many years a survival from the earliest attempts to record the value of British imports and exports. The office of inspector-general of imports and exports was constituted in 1697, and about the same time an official tariff was prepared for his guidance in computing the values of goods passing through the customs. This tariff was based on the existing prices of commodities, and, doubtless, for some years

VOL. III

33

very fairly represented actual market values. But as prices changed, the official rate of computation was continually diverging more widely from those actual values. When, in the eighteenth century, statisticians came to deal with the figures of trade, it soon became notorious that they did not correspond to facts. Constantly in the closing years of the century the inspector of imports and exports would place separately on record his computation of real values. The first official step towards reform was made in 1798, when the new

convoy duty" (an export duty) was levied on declared value. From that time it was customary to record the exports both according to the official tariff and according to their "real value," as will be seen by the statistical tables from 1800 to 1854. In the latter year, computation according to real value in all customs statistics was inaugurated.

For some time it was argued that though the official values did not represent value, they were a guide to quantities: but the suggestion did not bear examination. The official value remains a statistical curiosity (see also IMPORTS AND EXPORTS).

[First Report of Customs Commissioners, app. v. 1857.-Sessional Papers, vol. iii.— Porter's Progress of the Nation, 1847, § 3, ch. ix.-M'Culloch, Account of British Empire, pt. iii. ch. v., note.]

C. A. H.

OGILVIE, WILLIAM (1736-1819), after having completed his studies in Glasgow (1760-61) and Edinburgh (1761-62), became travelling tutor to Alexander, 4th Duke of Gordon, with whom he seems to have visited France and Italy; he was from 1762 to 1817 professor of philosophy and humanity at King's College, Aberdeen.

His anonymous tract, An Essay on the Right of Property in Land with respect to its foundation in the Law of Nature. Its present establishment by the Municipal Laws of Europe, and the regulations by which it might be rendered more beneficial to the lower ranks of Mankind, London, printed for J. Walter, Charing Cross, 1782, is alluded to in GODWIN'S Enquiry concerning Political Justice, 3rd ed. 1798, bk. viii. ch. iii. p. 459, and ch. ix. p. 515. "All riches," says Godwin, "and especially hereditary riches, are to be considered as the salary of a sinecure office, where the labourer and the manufacturer perform the duties, and the principal spends the income in luxury and idleness." In a footnote he adds: "This idea is to be found in an essay on the right of property in land, published about twelve years ago by an ingenious inhabitant of North Britain, pt. i. § iii. par. 38, 39. The reasonings of this author have sometimes considerable merit, though he has, by no means, gone to the source of the evil." Ogilvie, besides having inspired the father of English communism, may claim the honour to have been among the first advocates of agrarian reform, aiming at "an increase of the number of farmers, by favouring the movement of

D