MECHANICS AND USEFUL ARTS. lliU 



the facts ; and if they IDG numerous enough, it might be supposed that 

 their number would be a suHicient protection against the effect of any 

 partial disturbances. But even litre, caution, and special as well as exten- 

 sive knowledge, are required. There are disturbing influences even here 

 habits of life, nature of employment, immigration or emigration, igno- 

 rance or mis-statement of age. local epidemics, Sec., which leave sources of 

 error in even the most extended investigations. Still results are attained, 

 errors are more and more carefully watched against, and allowed for, or 

 excluded, and more and more of certainty is gradually introduced. And 

 here I should not omit to notico the valuable services of the Society of 

 Actuaries. They discuss all questions to which the science of probability 

 can be applied, and that circle is constantly extending ; assurance in 

 all its branches, annuities, reversionary interests, the laws of population, 

 mortality, and sickness ; they publish transactions, and, what is of the 

 greatest importance in this, as indeed of any branch of inductive science, 

 they hold an extensive correspondence with foreign countries. In fact, 

 they are doing for the contingencies of human life, and for materials 

 apparently as uncertain, something like what meteorology is doing for the 

 winds and waves. 



What shall.I say cf the statistics of crime, of education, of pauperism, 

 of charity, at once and reciprocally the effect and the cause of that 

 increasing attention to the condition of the people which, so favorably 

 distinguishes the present age ? Who can look at the mere surface of socie- 

 ty, transparently betraying the abysses which yawn beneath, and not desire 

 to know something of its secrets, to throw in the moral drag, and to 

 bring to the light of day some of the phenomena, the monstrous forms of 

 misery and vice, which it holds within its dark recesses. And who can look 

 at these things, no longer matter of conjecture, but ascertained, classed, 

 and tabled, without having the desire awakened or strengthened to do 

 something towards remedying the evils thus revealed, and without feeling 

 himself guided and assisted towards a remedy ? Yet here, more than in 

 other cases, should a man suspect himself ; here should he guard himself 

 against hasty conclusions, drawn from, the first appearance of the results ; 

 for here are disturbing influences most busily at work, not only from 

 without, but from, within ; not only in the nature of the facts themselves, 

 but in the feelings, passions, prejudices, habits, and moral constitution of 

 the observer. 



Still, the tabling of the facts is of infinite importance. If they disturb, 

 as they are sure to do, some feeling, some prejudice, some theory, some 

 conviction, it will be felt that, any how the facts have to be accounted for, 

 further investigation will follow ; and if it appear that no correction is 

 required, the truth will be established, and the hostile theory will, sooner 

 or later, give way and disappear. In these tilings it is, of course, more 

 than usually important that the facts to be selected for collection should 

 be such as are, in their own nature and under the circumstances, likely to 

 be ascertained correctly, and that the business of collection should be in 

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