746 EEPOET— 1886. 



Paris the birth-rate is raised by the many cases in which provincial shame and 

 crime seek concealment in the metropolis, and how the infant mortality of the 

 city, frightful though it be,^ is diminished by the custom of sending the children to 

 be nursed in the country, with the apparently paradoxical result that of 1,000 

 births there are remaining but 421 of between one to two years of age, while 

 there are 465 of two years and over. Again, the various motives which have 

 their expression in attracting a vast immigrant population to Paris, place the city 

 in some respects in the position of a new colony ; the immigrants are of the age of 

 the greatest vigour and energy, and consequently the population of Paris between 

 the age of fifteen and twenty-tive years is greatly in excess of that at even the 

 earliest years of life. The disturbing influence which this state of things must 

 exercise on the birth- and death-tables is obvious, and should serve to warn us how 

 careful we must be in arriving at what on a previous page has been referred to as 

 a * primary statistical quantity ' in matters of vital statistics, before applying to it 

 the ' scientific procedure involving the employment of statistics,' of Professor 

 Ingram. 



It is therefore satisfactory to know that at the first meeting of the International 

 Statistical Institute it will be proposed that the first work of the Institute shall be 

 to consider what are the points in regard to vital statistics that it is most essential 

 to be informed upon, and how far it may be possible to assimilate the returns in 

 such matters of the civilised countries of the world. No better or more useful con- 

 tribution to economic knowledge could be made by the distinguished statisticians 

 whom the formation of the Institute has brought into relation with each other. 



I cannot conclude the remarks which I am on this occasion permitted to make 

 without reference to another subject which must be one of engrossing interest in a 

 commercial centre such as Birmingham. The subject of currency and prices seems 

 to me to be one as to which the economist, whether orthodox or latitudinarian, is 

 distinctly waiting on the statistician. Has the currency of the world fallen, through 

 interference here, and non-interference there, into a condition that has told adversely 

 on the commerce of the world ? In what year, or during what period of years, 

 were prices at the normal level which may serve as a starting-point ? Have prices 

 since then fallen all round, and if so, by how much ? or if they have not generally 

 fallen, to what extent have they fallen in the cases in which the I'all is admitted ? 

 These are clearly questions that should be definitely answered before we can discuss, 

 except as a matter of speculative opinion, whether that fall has been to the advan- 

 tage of the community as a whole or otherwise. But statisticians are not only 

 divided in opinion as to the answer to the preliminary questions, it may be 

 almost said that the opinion of no two are in accord. It is true that the investiga- 

 tion of the variation of prices by means of an ' index number,' seems to ofler a 

 means of forming some definite conclusion; but it must be admitted that the 

 attempts to arrive at anything like a satisfactory index-number have as yet been 

 very far from satisfactory in their result. It cannot be maintained that any com- 

 parison of the fluctuations in price of a selected number of principal articles of 

 export or trade, or even of the ratio to the whole volume of foreign trade of all 

 articles dealt with in the ' Statistical Abstract' can ever furnish a measure of the 

 many sources of expenditure that make up the total cost of living. The inquiry 

 is one that seems at the first blush attractive almost to fascination ; and it is one 

 that has for many years past exercised the ingenuity of careful thinkers. Mr. 

 Joseph Lowe ~ more than sixty years ago devised a plan to which Mr. Poulett 

 Scrope, writing ten years afterwards, appears to refer in the following passage : — 

 * It has been proposed to correct the legal standard of value (or, at least, to afford 

 to individuals the means of ascertaining its errors), by the periodical publication of 

 an authentic price current, containing a list of a large number of articles in general 



' La mortalite des petits Parisians est affligeante ; lis vont, suivaut un mot popu- 

 laire, 'paver' lescimetieresdescampagnes,ouonlesenvoieen nourrice. Iln'en subsiste 

 plus que la moitie environ vers la deuxieme annee, lorsque tout ce qui n'est pas mort 

 est rentre a Paris. — Question de la Population en France, &c. p. 22. 



" Tlw Present State of England. London : 1823, pp. 333-346, and Appendix, pp. 

 95-100. 



