182 REPORT — 1860, 



STATISTICAL SCIENCE. 



Opening Address by Nassau W. Senior, M.A., President of the Section. 



In 1856 the General Committee of the British Association decided that the Section 

 over which I have the honour to preside should be entitled " The Section of Econo- 

 mic Science and Statistics." 



I have looked through the papers which since that time have been commu- 

 nicated to us, and I have been struck by the unscientific character of many of them. 



I use that word not dyslogistically but merely distinctivingly, merely as ex- 

 pressing that the writers had wandered from the domain of science into that of art. 

 ' I need scarcely remind you that a Science is a statement of existing facts, an 

 Art a statement of the means by which future facts may be brought about or in- 

 fluenced. A Science deals in premises, an Art in conclusions. A Science aims 

 only at supplying materials for the memory and the judgment. It does not pre- 

 suppose any purpose beyond the acquisition of knowledge. An Art is intended to 

 influence the will : it presupposes some object to be attained, and it points out 

 the easiest, the safest, or the most effectual conduct for that purpose. 



The subjects to which the British Association has directed our attention are 

 Economic Science, and Statistics. 



Economic Science, or, to use a more familiar name, " The Science of Political 

 Economy," may be defined as " The Science which states the laws regulating the 

 production and distribution of wealth, so far as they depend on the action of the 

 human mind." 



I say, " so far as they depend on the action of the human mind," in order to 

 mark to which of the two great genera of sciences, the Material, or, as they are 

 usually called, the Physical, and the Mental, or, as they are frequently called, the 

 Moral, sciences, Political Economy belongs. 



Unquestionably the political economist has much to do with matter. The 

 phenomena attending the production of material wealth occupy a great part of his 

 attention ; and these depend mainly on the laws of matter. The efficacy of ma- 

 chinery, the diminishing productiveness, under certain circumstances, of successive 

 applications of capital to land, and the fecundity and longevity of the human 

 species, are all important premises in political economy, and are all laws of matter. 

 But the political economist dwells on them only with reference to the mental 

 phenomena which they serve to explain ; he considers them as among the motives 

 to the accumulation of capital, as among the sources of rent, as among the regulators 

 of profit, and as among the causes which promote or retard the pressure of popula- 

 tion on subsistence. 



If the main subject of his studies were the physical phenomena attending the 

 production of wealth, a system of political economy must contain a treatise on me- 

 chanics, on navigation, on agriculture, on chemistry — in fact, on the subjects of 

 almost all the physical sciences and arts, for there are few of those arts or sciences 

 which are not subservient to wealth. All these details, however, the political 

 economist avoids, or uses a few of them sparingly for the purpose of illustration. 

 He does not attempt to state the mechanical and chemical laws which enable the 

 steam-engine to perform its miracles — he passes them by as laws of matter ; but 

 he explains, as fully as his knowledge will allow, the motives which induce the 

 mechanist to erect the steam-engine, and the labourer to work it. And these are 

 laws of mind. He leaves to the geologist to explain the laws of matter which 

 occasion the formation of coal, to the chemist to distinguish its component elements, 

 to the engineer to state the means by which it is extracted, and to the teachers of 

 many hundred different arts to point out the uses to which it may be applied. 

 What he reserves to himself is, to explain the laws of mind under which the owner 

 of the soil allows his pastures to be laid waste, and the minerals which they cover 

 to be abstracted ; under which the capitalist employs, in sinking shafts and piercing 

 galleries, funds which might be devoted to his own immediate enjoyment ; under 

 which the miner encounters the toils and the dangers of his hazardous and laborious 

 occupation ; and the laws, also laws of mind, which decide in what proportions the 



