f^aiue of Statistics. 337 



the evidence of facts, or to those fundamental laws of human action, which 

 must eventually control and modify all conventional rules.* We must as- 

 cribe this in certain cases to the necessity of fixing so7ne laws — be they 

 good or bad — before the condition of a people can become the subject of 

 statistical investigation ; but the grand source of this anomaly, in all ages 

 and countries, has been the struggle of private interests, or the conflict of 

 political passions, when the welfare of the whole community should be re- 

 cognised as the only proper rule and standard. " In moral and political 

 reasoning," it has been well said, " we have ever to do with questions in 

 which the waywardness of man's will, and the turbulence of man's pas- 

 sions, are among the strongest elements." It is of the greatest conse- 

 quence then when such weiglity interests are at stake, to give moral and 

 political philosophy the sound basis of facts, and to assimilate their pro- 

 cesses, as far as possible, to those of demonstrative science. We all recol- 

 lect the famous saying of Hobbes, " that if it had been a thing contrary to 

 the [supposed] interests of men that the three angles of a triangle should be 

 equal to two right angles, that doctrine would have been, if not disputed, 

 yet suppressed, as far as they whom it concerned were able." 



But all arguments against experience are fallacious ; and in physical 

 truth (to quote again Professor Sedgwick's words), " Whatever may be 

 onr difference of opinion, there is an ultimate appeal to experiment and 

 observation, against which passion and prejudice have not a single plea to 

 urge." Why then should not our moral and political reasoning, so far as 

 practicable, be made subject to the same criterion ? Complex and diver- 

 sified as are the motives that influence the human will and 



" Human action. 

 That is the seed too of contingencies 

 Strew'd on the dark land of futurity," 



their general results in the character and condition of society may legiti- 

 mately be classed within the province of inductive science. These results 

 are susceptible in a great degree of being reduced to measurement and 



• " No advantage in moral policy can be lasting, which is not founded on the inde- 

 lible sentiments of the heart of man. Whatever law deviates from that principle will 

 always meet with a resistance, which will destroy it in the end." — Beccariaon Crimes 

 and Punishments (quoted by Simpson, "On Popular Education," p. 280). 



The same principle is strongly urged by Dr. Hampden in his " Lectures on Moral 

 Philosophy ;" an almost invaluable book to the student of human nature, and full of 

 the elements of thought. " Ignorance of the nature of man, and of his condition in 

 this world, will be found at the bottom of those wild theories of the regeneration of 

 society and revolutions of government, which speculatists or the seditious have de- 

 vised.". ..." How much vain disturbance, how much severe suffering, might have 

 been saved, had a diffused knowledge of the principles of human nature established 

 a general conviction, that there were impossibilities in the moral no less than in the 

 physical world!" — pp. 5.5, 61. 



