TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 737 



Section F.— ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS. 

 Pkesident of the Section — John Biddtilph Martin, M.A., F.S.S., F.Z.S. 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 2. 

 The Peesident delivered the folio-wing Address : — 



As the years succeed each other, and the roll of past Presidents lengthens, an ever- 

 increasing hurden of responsibility lies on the occupant of the chair which I am 

 called upon to fill. For twenty-one years (1835-55) this Section existed as the 

 "Statistical Section ; for thirty-one years more it has been known as the Economic and 

 Statistical Section, and for the fourth time its meeting-place is Birmingham. Henry 

 Hallam presided over this Section at the Birmingham meeting in 1839, the late 

 Lord Lyttelton in 1849, the Earl of Derby, then Lord Stanley, in 1865; since 

 the last-mentioned date the chair has been occupied by men distinguished by their 

 knowledge and practice of public aflairs — such as the late Mr. W. E. Forster, Lord 

 Iddesleigh, and Mr. Shaw-Lefevre — or by their acquaintance with the theoretic 

 aspect of economic questions, among whom may be mentioned Professor Ingram, 

 Professor Jevons, Professor Thorold Rogers, and Professor Sidgwick, while the 

 names of Mr. Palgrave and of the late Mr. Henry Fawcett recall men who iu 

 dittierent careers of life have shown themselves conversant with matters theoretical 

 and matters practical alike. It might have been assumed that under such guidance 

 the position of this Section of the British Association would have been at all 

 times amply secured ; yet it is no secret that but a few years ago its efficiency 

 was called in question, and its status as a scientific body was seriously challenged. 

 The attack called forth an address that has been described by a subsequent Presi- 

 dent as * the most elaborate and brilliant to which this Section has ever listened,' 

 and since the delivery of this address at Dublin by Professor Ingram in 1878 the 

 position of the Economic and Statistical Section has been, if not absolutely defined 

 as a matter of form, yet practically secure as a matter of fact. 



But it is not only before the followers of rival sciences in this many-sided 

 British Association that economic research has had to stand on its defence. Almost 

 at the same time that Professor Ingram was vindicating the proposition that 

 economic phenomena were 'capable of ' and ' pi-oper subjects for ' scientific treat- 

 ment. Professor Bonamy Price, addressing a body ^ somewhat similar to our Section 

 in its constitution, declared that ' political economy is in entire abeyance,' and 

 concluded that ' political economy is not a science, in any strict sense, but a body of 

 systematic knowledge gathered from the study of common processes, which have 

 been practised all down the history of the human race in the production and distri- 

 bution of wealth. Who,' he exclaims, ' sends for a professional economist in a strike ? ' 

 and in despair at finding that ' in the war of classes political economy is absent,' and 

 that he was unable to discover ' uniform sequences, general facts which can be de- 

 scribed as laws because they ever recur in the same form,' decides that until the far- 

 distant day shall come when the actions of man in his social relations shall be guided 

 by a supreme governing science of society, ' for sociology we must substitute political 

 philosophy in its broadest sense ; or, better yet, the legislator himself.' But we 



' Department of Economy and Trade, Social Scknce Congress, Cheltenham, 1878. 

 1886. 3 B 



