TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 155 



tribute, the necessaiy complement to the well-known ' Journal des jficonomistes.' 

 The Dublin and the Manchester Societies remiad us by their useful labours of the 

 utility of Statistical Societies in our great cities. 



I admit that the country has a right to look to the Government for the census, 

 for registration returns, for commercial statistics, for agricultural statistics, for 

 industrial statistics, and for financial statistics, as the collection, analysis, and 

 promulgation of facts of imiversal interest is one of the Queen's most useful pre- 

 rogatives. Formerly little or nothing of the kind was done ; but by refen-ing to 

 the annual reports which emanate now from the public offices, you will see that 

 this great duty is kept in view. The reports of the War Office and the Admiralty, 

 those of the Board of Trade, of the Customs, the Inland Revenue, the Post Office, 

 and of the Registrars-General of England, Scotland, and Ireland, of the Poor Law 

 Board, and of the Emigration Commissioners, of the Privy Council Officer of 

 Health, of the Education, Factory, and Mine Inspectors ; the judicial statistics, 

 criminal and civil, the Consuls' Reports which the Foreign Office now publislies, 

 show that the Civil Service is everywhere anxious to do its duty. And I shall 

 perhaps be pardoned for reminding you that men in the Ci^'il Service are among 

 the great names of our science, from Petty, King, and Davenant, to Beacon Hume, 

 Porter, McCuUoch, John Mill, and, to cite no more contemporaries, Adam Smith 

 himself. The C'vnl Service of the present day is quite in a position to sustain the 

 statistical reputation of England in the face of Europe. What it wants is a better 

 coordination of its work ; which might, as was recommended by the Congress, 

 be accomplished by a board at which the principal offices should be re'presented. 



W^e venture in this Section to call the attention of Mr. Milner Gibson to the 

 organization of a central authority " to direct," in the words of the late Prince 

 Consort, " all the great statistical operations." Such a body has been recently 

 created in many of the States of Europe. 



Another matter this Association may very properly lu-ge on the same minister. 

 We ought, from agricultural statistics, to know approximately in October the pro- 

 duce of the harvest in Europe as well as in Amenca, and the state of the live stock 

 to supply the markets. The season has been extraordinary; what have been its 

 effects upon the crops ? Unfortunately the Government has nothing to tell us. 

 English agricultural statistics are a complete blank. Yet no one seriously doubts the 

 utility of this question of the supply of food, to town and country, to rich and poor, 

 to farmers and merchants ; it ^A\\ enter largely into the commercial combinations 

 of the next twelve months, and is one of the elements affecting the circulation. 



The Registrar-General of Ireland procures the returns for that division of the 

 United Kingdom ; and the produce of the last harvest of Australia is known : it is 

 in some parts, if my memory series, half the average crop ; an unpleasant result, 

 which may influence the gold supply, but will partially be mitigated by timely 

 provisions to meet a loss the extent of which is already knowm. 



Mr. Hunt has just published a return of the mines of every kind, and of the 

 mineral produce of the kingdom. It is alike creditable to him, to Sir Roderick 

 Murchison, and to the mining proprietors, who voluntarily supplied the infornui- 

 tion. Some of them are not far from us, and will perhaps communicate the results 

 to the Section. 



I now come to our tools and our methods. Foremost in importance is the 

 question of statistical units. The Legislatm-e has just passed a measure authorizing 

 the use of the metric weights and measures in England ; and the report of a Com- 

 mittee of the Association on the subject will be presented to the Association by 

 Mr. Heywood. In the first stage of statistics we coimt ; but this no longer suffices, 

 and we have to weigh or measure. 



Upon the choice of units of weights and measures our progress in no slighlt 

 degree depends. Now, one weight will not serve all purjioses. Coal, for instance, 

 cannot be sold by the ounce, it is sold by the ton ; sugar by the hundredweight ; 

 tea by the pound; gold by the oimce ; while opium is administered in gi-ains. If 

 the hundredweight consisted of one hundred pounds, the ton of ten hundreds, the 

 ounce of the tenth of a pound, and all the units required in every trade were so 

 related to each other that we could say tens, hundreds, thousands, and so on, as we 

 do in common numeration, all the compound rules which fill our books of arith- 



