118 REPORT— 1866. 



material on wliicli this congratulatory comment may be made, as scientific research 

 accumulates its observations, and arranges its inferences. The ^lathematiciau, the 

 Chemist, the Physiologist, the Geologist, the Mechanician, can point with satis- 

 faction to the annual gTOwth of their special sciences, can compare the demonstra- 

 tions of the present with the hjiaotheses of the past, and can confidentlj' claim the 

 acknowledged progress which research and method have achieved. 



The case, however, is somewhat diflerent vnth the Section over which I have the 

 honour to preside. We can but rarely claim that we have made any new dis- 

 coveries in the subject which occupies our attention, for we deal '(\-ith that which 

 has been constantly' matter of anxious thought long Jiefore the beginnings of other 

 inductive sciences. Our science is as old as civilization, coeval with the fir.?t 

 specidation on the canons of practical and political philosophy. We cannot claim 

 to discover new elements, new forces, new economies, for we are interpreting that 

 one force which effects the cooperation of man in social life ; a force whose esti- 

 mate has occupied the keenest minds since men began the habit of consecutive 

 reflection. We have before us the phenomena of society, and we know that there 

 is a standard, always ideal, but ever the legitimate, the chief object and aim of 

 social practice ; we know that there are hindrances to the attainment of such a 

 standard, and in a general way that such a result may be best approximated by 

 the wise balance of liberty and restriction. But the limits of the former and the 

 endm'ance of the latier are matters of keen and constant debate, of doubt wliicli 

 may well be honest, even when it seems to be interested. V\^e are invariably re- 

 minded that by the practice of men our demonstrations are forced to appear in the 

 shape of problems, that our theories are often acknowledged to be indisputable, 

 but are perpetually liable to dispute. No one I presume doubted, even when our 

 system of trade was protective, that free exchange was the natm-al and normal 

 state, however much it was conceived that artificial or political exigencies needed 

 its modification. When our fiscal system, as we know now, was one mass of foUy 

 and injustice, the financiers of the age certainly imagined that they were patriotic, 

 never doubted that they were intelligent, always affirmed that they wished to deal 

 honestly with all interests. 



But what our science lacks in novelty, what it needs in practical conclusiveness, 

 it makes up in importance and interest. AVe do not, when we insist on the theo- 

 retical exactness of our principles, afl'ect to deny that they are, perhaps must be, 

 modified by certain overruling exigencies, and that the science and philosophy of 

 social life will never exactly square with the habits of mankind. With many 

 persons, the economist will always be a dreamer, the author of an impossible 

 optimism, the dweller in a new Atlantis, in an impracticable Utopia, in a Cloud- 

 cuckoo town of unnatural alliances. Assailing, as he constantly does, the policy 

 of restriction, he is attacking a fortress of undoubted strength. Striving as he 

 constantly does against a social habit, a political maxim, a fiscal expedient, a com- 

 mercial trick, he is struggling to undermine a position which becomes untenable 

 at a time its defenders are reduced to acknowledge that its defence is impolitic, 

 though it has hitherto been thought to be judicious ; mischievous, though it has 

 seamed to be salutary ; destructi'se, though it has been believed to be expedient ; 

 interested, when it was averred to be national. He is constantly labouring to 

 refute men's hasty sympathies by appealing to their deliberate reason. 



We cannot then dispute the disadvantage under which economic science labour?, 

 when compared mth other efforts of research, whose course encounters no ob- 

 stacle because it clashes with no interest, whose conclusions are accepted gi-aci- 

 ously because they provoke no prejudice and awaken no fear. But we can, on the 

 other hand, claim no small victory in this domain of human thought, and con- 

 gratulate ourselves on a progi-ess, not the less real because it has been resisted, 

 disputed, and won, after many laborious st''uggles. 



In the first place, then, no science occupies a more eminent position, because none 

 deal with such exalted purposes. Political economy is pei'petuallly contrasting 

 general with special interests, lu'ging men from naiTow ends to the broadest aims, 

 teaching the interdependence of men, of races, of nations. The W^isdom which 

 has parcelled the earth out for various products, all necessary towards the develop- 

 ment of the best civilization, instructs men also in the fact that as men cannot 



