510 president's address. SECTION Gl. 



said to be the beginning of the actuarial point of view, a matter which, 

 however, we must leave for the moment. 



4. Beginning of the Modern Census. — It was not long after 

 Graunt's time that the importance of a proper census was generally 

 perceived. It has already been mentioned that from I7i8 Prussia had 

 annual enumerations of population. The earliest enumerations of 

 population of modem times, however, were probably those in some of 

 the colonies of North America, South and North Carolina dating back 

 to 1700 and 1710 respectively. By 1753 the population of North 

 America, as a whole, had been counted. The count of the population 

 of Denmark dates back to sixteen years later — ^viz., to 1769. 



The first proposal for a general census made in Great Britain was 

 as early as 1753, the date of the enumeration of North America, but 

 the proposal was not acted upon till 1800, Avhen it was decided that 

 the census should be decennial, the first being taken in 1801 by Rick- 

 man. This year, also marked the first census for Holland and Norway. 

 Brazil's first census was in 1817. In some of the Swiss Cantons, 

 censuses were taken in the latter part of the 18th century, but it was 

 not till 1836 that all the Cantons were embraced. Austria followed 

 three years later than this (1839). 



5. The Elimination of S-wp^posed Non-statistical Elements. — 

 Initially statistics embraced many elements, such, for example, as 

 history, geography, political economy, law and administrative enact- 

 ments, &c. But specialisation in each soon required its elimination 

 from the general body of statistics proper. The incisiveness and 

 methodical character of Adam Smith's " Wealth of Nations," published 

 in 1776, had practically created "political economy" as an inde- 

 pendent subject of knowledge. Stewart in 1799, Malthus in 1804, 

 Ricardo in 1812, and McCulloch in 1825, in England; Say in 1803, 

 Sismondi in 1819, and Droz in 1828, in France; Garve in 1794-6, 

 Sartorius in 1796, Jacob in 1^05, Kraus in 1807, Hufeland in 1807, 

 Liider in 1820, Rau in 1821, Politz in 1823, and von Rotteck in 1829, 

 in Germ^any, all helped powerfully to develop the new science. It was 

 the subject of lectures in the Universities, and, as treated, embraced 

 all that was directly related to economic policy, and, indeed, much 

 that previously had been held to peculiarly belong to the domain of 

 statistics. 



About the same timei. Law and Administration began to be divided 

 ofi" with equal sharpness, the philosophical examinations of the subject 

 by Kant in 1796, by Fichte in 1796, and by Hegel in 1821, tending to 

 accentuate the severance. 



Geography also became specialised, Gatterer in 1775, and Zeune 

 in 1808, in his "Gaea," giving quite a new complexion thereto. The 

 morphology of the earth's surface, and the conditions which such 

 features impose upon human communities, were made the 2^o?/?f 

 d'appui of the new treatment. Ritter's great geography of 1818-1819, 

 the greatest work of its kind of modern times, at once established the 

 claim of this subject to independence of treatment, and secured its 

 separation from statistics. 



Collaterally, a rapid development of life insurance business — viz., 

 at the close of the 18th and early part of the 19th centuiy — estab- 

 lished the foundations of actuarial science, which, though in its essence 



