ON OFFICIAL STATISTICS. 417 



Section F. 



ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL SCIENCE, AND 

 STATISTICS. 



President of the Section : Mr. H. H. Hayter, C.M.G., Government 



Statist, Melbotirne. 



Wednesday, August 29. 

 The President delivered the following address : — 



ON OFFICIAL STATISTICS. 



It is the privilege of the official statistician, to furnish others 

 with facts on which to base their reasonings, rather than to 

 reason upon those facts himself ; to supply, as it were, the raw 

 material, which the political economist and the social scientist 

 might turn into the manufactui'ed article ; to help to lay the 

 foundation on which the historian and the politician might raise 

 their edifices. 



And here it is fitting I should pay a tribute to the memory of 

 the late Dr. Hearn, Dean of the Faculty of Law at the Mel- 

 bourne University, whose profound learning, strong common 

 sense, sound judgment, and intimate acquaintance with the higher 

 objects aimed at by this Section, would, if he had lived, at once 

 have pointed to him as the most proper person to be its president, 

 and the one best calculated to guide its deliberations to a useful 

 and practical result. 



Official Statistics being that branch of the subjects assigned for 

 the consideration of this Section, with which I am most convei'- 

 sant, I shall confine this address mainly to them, and in view of 

 their admitted impoi'tance when based upon correct data, com- 

 piled honestly, and used intelligently, I shall endeavour to point 

 out a few of the defects, which my long experience has led me to 

 observe in those published in some of the Australian colonies, not 

 excepting my own, as well as in some other countries. Many of 

 these defects can be easily rectified, and no doubt will be so when 

 attention is drawn to their existence, but some which are depen- 

 dant upon circumstances over which the statistician has no con- 

 trol, he will have difficulty in combating successfully ; by dint, 

 however, of determination and persistence, much may l)e done ; 

 and although, so far as my own colony is concerned, I have not 



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