Moral Stnt'tst'tcs of France. 335 



whose brain is imbecile, whose limbs are dead, and who pays in disease 

 and weakness, the penalty of transcending the natural proportions of health 

 and vigour." 



During the middle ages, we have to lament the almost entire neglect of 

 statistical research. A dark cloud seemed to hang for many centuries over 

 the human mind, and to hide from view the true sources of a country's 

 greatness. Political aggrandisement by force of arnrs, and at the expense 

 of every rival, rather than a common growth and prosperity by union and 

 co-operation, as members of one great family, is, unhappily, what history 

 records as the object of almost universal ambition. It is not to be won- 

 dered at, that in such times neither the governors nor the governed were 

 alive to the importance, or favourably disposed to the exhibition of those 

 facts, which illustrate the social advancement of a people, and which teach 

 them that prosperity follows rather in the silent track of peaceful industry, 

 than in the dazzling march of the military conqueror.* 



In later times our own country has the credit of having led the way in 

 the science of Political Arithmetic. About the middle of the seventeenth 

 century, a valuable work was published by Capt. John Graunt, "On the 

 London Bills of Mortality," in which considerable progress was made in 

 the classification of deaths from different diseases j and many interesting 

 facts collected relative to the ravages of the plague, which at various pe- 

 riods desolated the metropolis. Subsequently, a good deal of information 

 on different branches of Statistics, was furnished by Sir Wm. Petty, Dr. 

 Halley, and Dr. Davenant j but, with the exception of inquiries as to the 

 amount of the population and the laws of mortality, (a knowledge of which 

 was essential in the calculation of annuitiesj little was done in the last 

 century to give consistency and arrangement to the mass of statistical facts 

 that were accumulating on every side, from the labours of independent 

 iuquirers.t 



* Is not this the lesson which all history impresses as the most essential to social 

 progress, or what Mackintosh finely calls "the education of the human race, — that 

 vast work of so many ages, of which we see only a few steps ?" 



t We must not, however, pass without notice two important works, published 

 about the close of the last century, Sir John Sinclair's " Statistical Account of Scot- 

 tand," in 21 vols. 8vo. and Colquhoun's " Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis." 

 The former work, though far too diffuse and susceptible of great i.Tiprovement 

 (which it is in fact receiving in a second edition, now in course of publication) , de- 

 serves the reputation of being the most exact and comprehensive of its kind that 

 British science could then exhibit ; and Mr. Colquhoun's volume— the first English 

 work on the Statistics o/" crmie— besides its value as an exposition of facts relative 

 to the morals of the metropolis, is distinguished by its anticipation of most of those 

 improvements recently effected in criminal jurisprudence, and by an enlightened 

 spirit of practical benevolence, equally honourable to him as a man and a magistrate. 



It may be interesting to some to know that a statue of Sir John Sinclair is about 

 to be erected in the town of Thurso, in memory of the benefits which his patriotic 

 labours have conferred on Scotland. 



