158 REPORT — 1864. 



of their subject territories, the United States possess 730, England has 1145. and 

 Russia 2133 million hectars. We do not accept this unit in statistics as the final 

 unit of land. Land is rich, poor, or waste — cultivated or uncultivated ; and a 

 hectar in the centi-e of l^ondon, in the vale of Gloucestershire, on the banks of the 

 Lena in Siberia, in MelboiuTie, and in the middle of Australia, is a verj' different 

 thine. All the chief elements that we need are summed up in the mean rahie of 

 a hectar; and in the usual divisions of hectars into arable, meadow, pasture, forest, 

 water, waste. The value of the land of the United States certainly exceeds that 

 of the Russian Empire ; in the absence of agricultural statistics, we do not know 

 the value of our land, but the value of the fixed property of the Isles of England 

 exceeds the value of the fixed property in either the Russian or American domi- 

 nions*. The value of a hectar is the final land unit. 



As all the mechanical forces are expressible in units of weight, so the values of 

 land, of all property, of all products, are expressible in units of gold ; and we may 

 either measure those values, and express them in tons, or in any pieces of equal 

 weight of that metal. We take the sovereign for the statistical unit of value, 

 because it is in use — for the same reason as engineers take horse-power as the xmit 

 of work. 



"What are we to say to the human imit ? Here also distinctions have to be 

 drawn. As hectars differ, so does the average man of different states. Besides 

 the divisions incidental to sex and age, the work of different races of men varies 

 in quantity; a navvy, a Siberian peasant, a Hindoo, a Negro, a Chinaman, an 

 Esquimaux, do very different quantities of work in the year. 



The mechanical force of a country is the sum of the working forces of its popu- 

 lation, with its steam-engines, horses, winds, waters, which can all be measured 

 by the engineer's unit of work. Adam Smith proposed to employ a unit of laboiir 

 as the unit of value. The wages of men express the value of their labour in gold, 

 and from the mean value of these earnings at different ages of life, the economic 

 value of a man is calculated by taking the interest of money and the contingencies 

 of his life into account. At the age of 25, the present value of the future earn- 

 ings of an English agricultural labourer, after deducting the cost of necessary 

 maintenance, is £246t. The value of the mean worktime of artisans, artists, and 

 professional men, varies indefinitely: and as it is evident that the human units 

 dirt'er, so the difference can be appreciated by the value of their works. Nations 

 differ in their intellect as well as in their moral faculties ; and the expression of 

 these forces of the soul, whether we look at scientific achievements or vulgar 

 errors, at virtues or crimes, is one of the difficult problems in statistics. It is by 

 the correct appreciation of units, of the things signified by figures, that the 

 statist is distinguished from the empiric who throws heaps of tables in our faces, 

 and asserts that he can prove anything by figures. 



After observation, discrimination of units, and expression of their numbers in 

 flsfures, come the exposition of facts in tables or diagrams, and the determination 

 of their relations by mathematical analysis. Logarithms facilitate the calculation 

 of ratios ; and the calculus of probabilities enables the statist from the past to pre- 

 dict the future within determinable limits of en-or. Prediction is a function of 

 this, as it is of all the sciences. The exposition of doctrines, and the use of them 

 in argument, to induce men to follow a course of action, is an important part of 

 statistics ; and as it is connected with politics, has been carried to a high pitch of 

 excellence in England. Several of the pieces of Burke, some extant speeches of 

 Pitt, and in recent times the speeches of Huskisson, of Peel, and of the Chancellor 

 of the E.xchequer, as well as articles in the newspapers and reviews of the higher 

 class, offer examples of this order of eloquence. 



Statistics admit of many practical applications, and this naturally commends 

 the study to the minds of Englishmen. I will mention an example. In the first 

 place, as* we have had a minister, we have had statistics of trade, and from the 

 time of Davenant until the present day, when the Statistical Department is pre- 



* The true value of real estates and personal property in the States was estimated at 

 the census of 1860 to be £3,232,000,000, taking So to £1. 

 t Statistical Journal, vol. xvi. p. 43. 



