NATURE AND LIMITS OF SCIENCE OF POLITICS. 731 



These tables of statistics are periodically furnished by the Govern- 

 ment, not only for purposes of contemplated legislation, but independ- 

 ently of all thought of immediate use. The fallacious use to which 

 purely numerical facts can be put, with only too seductive a show of 

 plausibility, is beginning to be fully acknowledged and guarded against. 

 But the assurance that the registered number of births, deaths, and 

 marriages, within a given period and area, as well as the periodical 

 records of crime and disease, and, even more obviously, the tabulated 

 increase or decrease of commerce, shipping, and manufactures of dif- 

 ferent sorts, may serve to point to the presence of general laws that 

 is, of permanent sequences of cause and effect is a sufficient justifica- 

 tion of the labor and expense involved in obtaining the severally- 

 relevant statistics. The comparison between the numerical results 

 obtained at one time and place and another, and between those pre- 

 sented in different countries, is becoming a political method increasing 

 in prevalence and repute. In many quarters, indeed, the value of 

 purely numerical estimates has been much exaggerated, and its pecul- 

 iar liability to error, when made a basis of political reasoning, has 

 been too much ignored. But when its limits of application are duly 

 recognized, and care is taken to distinguish legal and political causes 

 from those which are purely ethical or sociological, the study and use 

 of statistics must be regarded as a most valuable ally, and an unmis- 

 takable proof of the scientific character of political studies. 



Akin to the token which the enlarged use of statistics affords of 

 the growing recognition of Politics as a true science, is the ever-in- 

 creasing disposition, at the present day, to await, at any political crisis, 

 whether legislative or administrative, the result of a patient examina- 

 tion of evidence as to the state of the facts and the previous history of 

 the question. 



It is now the practice in the more advanced countries to take, in 

 the path of serious political change, no step which seems to be other 

 than the next step onward in a course which has become habitual, 

 without first nominating, by one process or another, competent persons 

 to conduct a critical examination and to deliberate and report upon 

 the matter. The most searching powers are often intrusted to this 

 body of persons to enable them to inform themselves not only as to all 

 the interests, in their several proportions, to be affected by the new 

 policy, but as to the history of the general policy pursued in the past, 

 and occasionally even as to the practice in other countries. 



It often, indeed, happens that after a laborious investigation, last- 

 ing for months or even for years, the popular interest in the once- 

 advocated policy is found to be exhausted, or diverted into new 

 directions, and the thought of new legislation is abandoned, and a 

 voluminous, costly, and invaluable report cast on one side. Such are 

 among the inevitable accidents which retard the progress of Govern- 

 ment. 



