THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 719 



the recent one in Great Coram Street suppose I were to compare the 

 ratio borne by this number of murderers to the number of foreigners 

 in England with the answering ratio among our own people ; and sup- 

 pose I were to take this as a test of the Continental culture Mr. Arnold 

 so much admires. Probably, he would not think the test quite rele- 

 vant, and yet it would be quite as relevant as that he uses perhaps 

 somewhat more relevant. Suppose, again, that, by way of criticism 

 on German administration, I were to dwell on the catastrophe at Ber- 

 lin, where, during the celebration of victory, fourteen sight-seers were 

 killed, and some hundreds injured ; or, suppose I were further to judge 

 it by the disclosures of the leading Berlin physician, Virchow, who 

 shows that one out of every three children born in Berlin dies the first 

 year, and whose statistics prove the general mortality to be increasing 

 so rapidly that, while "in 1854 the death-rate was 1,000, in 1851-'64 it 

 rose to 1,164, and in 1864-'68 to 1,817 " 'suppose, I say, that I took 

 these facts as proof of failure in the social system Mr. Arnold would 

 have us copy. Possibly he would not be much shaken, though it seems 

 to me that this evidence would be more to the point than a case of in- 

 fanticide among ourselves. Further, suppose I were to test French 

 administration by the statistics of mortality in the Crimea, as given 

 at the late meeting of the French Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, by M. Le Fort, who pointed out that 



" During those six months of winter, 1855-56, when hostilities were almost 

 suspended, the English having only 165 wounded in six months, and the French 

 323, the English army, thanks to the precautions taken, had but few men in the 

 hospitals and lost only 606, while the French army witnessed the outbreak of the 

 typhus in its midst, though it might have been avoided, and lost, from disease 

 alone, 21,190 men." 



and who further, respecting the relative mortalities from operations, 

 said that 



" In the Crimea the English and French armies were exposed to the same 

 wants, to the same atmospherio changes, and yet what a difference of mortality 

 in surgical cases ! The English lost 24 per cent, of their cases of arm-amputations, 

 while we lost double that number, or 55 per cent. The same is to be said of 

 amputations of the leg : 35 per cent, against 71." 



suppose, I say, that I were thus to deal with the notion that " they 

 manage these things better in France." Mr. Arnold would, very likely. 



not abandon his belief. And yet this contrast would certainly be as 

 damaging as the fact about the girl Wragg, to which he more than once 

 refers so emphatically. Surely it is manifest enough that, by selecting 

 the evidence, any society may be relatively blackened, and any other 

 society relatively whitened. 



From Mr. Arnold's method let us turn to some of his specific state- 

 ments: taking first the statement that the English are deficient in ideas. 



1 Lancet, December 28, 1872. 



