606 rnuPORT—1883. 
tific exposition of results; and to his perhaps abler disciple Mr. William New- 
march, from whom I had myself the privilege to learn much, especially during the 
latter years of his life. Of others whom I have had the advantage of Inowing, I 
may name Mr. James Heywood, whose continued labours in the service of the 
Association show that our branch of study is well to be reconciled with a calm 
and thoughtful life, and who keeps up a warm interest in the work of the Section 
over which he presided thirty years ago. My list of the more recent Presidents. 
must close with Professor Jevons, too early lost to economic study, and Professor 
Ingram. I have mentioned in particular Professor Ingram’s name. I well re- 
member the enthusiastic language in which Mr. Newmarch spoke to me of his 
address before this Section. Bearing this in mind, I wish in the first place to 
bring to the remembrance of the present meeting the manner in which Professor 
Ingram claimed for the science of social life a place in the highest ranks as a branch 
of investigation. ; 
In many respects this claim is generally conceded. 
The position which Economic Science occupies in this country shows how strong 
is the hold it possesses over public opinion. Whether our statesmen at all times 
interpret its teaching accurately or not, they feel bound to profess a deference to 
that teaching, or at least to explain the reasons why they ditfer from it. And this 
is rightly the case. At all times since this country began to commence that re- 
markable development of ripening, in gradual, calm, steady progress, from what, 
for want of a better term, I must style medizyval, to modern modes of thought, 
on which it still continues, a growth, as it seems to me, unexampled in the history 
of any other nation, there have been among its citizens able teachers of Economic 
truth. Opinions expressed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth by Sir Thomas Gresham, 
those held during the reign of Charles II. by Sir William Petty, are current at the 
present time, because they are based on careful observation and sound reasoning. 
Our commercial policy is now based on lines laid down nearly a century since by 
Adam Smith. And the brilliant success which has followed the financial measures 
carried out by Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Gladstone results from the ability with 
which those statesmen applied the principles of economic teaching to the circum- 
stances of the period with which they were surrounded. This brief summary 
indicates the points in which economic teaching is most sharply brought home to 
the minds of the majority of those who think about it at all at the present time. 
They do not so much think about it as a science, as in that subdivision of its study 
which I may best call an art. They say it has brought in free trade, They say 
also that while free trade has caused marvellous prosperity to this country, other 
countries do very well without it. Hence they doubt, on what they call practical 
erounds, the teaching of Economic Science. 
I do not intend to enter into this controversy here, though I think there can be 
no doubt on which side the truth lies. But I merely use this as an illustration. If 
economic teaching will produce wealth, it is, many people think, worth studying 
on those grounds. If it will not, it is not, in their opinion, worth following. Now, 
while I most distinctly desire to assert that nations may, by listening to the lessons 
of sound economic teaching, advance their prosperity in many ways, as they haye 
done by following Free Trade, yet we must not limit the scope of the science to 
investigating the production of wealth alone. We do not say that the sole object 
of the science of chemistry is to improve health, though the health of the inhabi- 
tants of this country has been benefited in no small degree by attending, however 
imperfectly, to the teaching of chemical science. 
What, then, should the course of action of the careful student of economic 
thought be at the present time? We must not think that the study of the produc- 
tion and distribution of wealth alone is the sole object of Economic Science; nor, 
again, that everything which the science has to teach has been discovered and 
taught already; that we have now but to classify results, to expound to all future 
generations text-books which have been written by our forefathers; that the whole 
kingdom oyer which observation may extend has, been explored and mapped out; 
that everything which can be said on these subjects has been said already. If 
we did this we should place ourselves entirely and hopelessly in the wrong. yen 
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