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TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 1141 
Section F..—ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS. 
PRESIDENT OF THE Section—Professor Henry Srpewick, M.A., Litt.D, 
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10. 
The following Report and Papers were read :— 
1. Report of the Committee for continuing the inquiries relating to the 
Teaching of Science in Elementary Schools—See Reports, p. 692. 
The PresipEnT delivered the following Address :— 
I HAVE chosen for the subject of the discourse, which by custom has to be 
delivered from the chair that I am called upon to occupy, the scope and method of 
economic science, and its relation to other departments of what is vaguely called 
‘social science.’ If the abstract and academic nature of the subject, together with 
my own deficiencies as an expositor, should render my remarks less interesting to 
the audience than they have a right to expect, I trust that they will give me what 
indulgence they can; but, above all, that they will not anticipate a corresponding 
remoteness from concrete fact in the discussions that are to follow. I see from the 
records of the Association that it has been the custom in this department—and it 
seems to me a good custom—to give to the annual addresses of the presidents the 
variety that naturally results when each speaker in turn applies himself unreservedly 
to that aspect of our complex and many-sided inquiry which his special studies 
and opportunities have best qualified him to treat ; and as my own connection with 
economic science has been in the way of studying, criticising, and developing 
theories, rather than collecting and systematising facts, I have thought that I 
should at any rate have a greater chance of making a useful contribution to our 
discussions if I allowed myself to deal with the subject from the point of view that 
is most familiar to me. 
I have the less scruple in adopting this course because I do not think that any 
who may listen to my remarks are likely to charge me with overrating the value 
of abstract reasoning on economic subjects, or regarding it as a substitute for an 
accurate and thorough investigation of facts instead of an indispensable instrument 
of such investigation. There is indeed a kind of political economy which flourishes 
in proud independence of facts, and undertakes to settle all practical problems 
of Governmental interference or private philanthropy by simple deduction from 
one or two general assumptions—of which the chief is the assumption of the uni- 
versally beneficent and harmonious operation of self-interest well let alone. This 
kind of political economy is sometimes called ‘ orthodox,’ though it has the charac- 
teristic unusual in orthodox doctrines of being repudiated by the majority of 
accredited teachers of the subject. But whether orthodox or not, I must be 
allowed to disclaim all connection with it; the more completely this survival of 
the a priori politics of the eighteenth century can be banished to the remotest 
available planet, the better it will be, in my opinion, for the progress of economic 
