134 report — 1865. 



law, but inevitable ignorance on our part of wbat the law is. When you find uni- 

 formity, or something which closely approximates to uniformity — as in the number 

 of letters yearly posted without addresses, in the number of widows and widowers 

 who marry, or in the number of detected offences of the same nature committed 

 within the year — it is impossible not to be impressed, however trifling may be the 

 illustration of them, with the permanence and steadiness of the laws which regulate 

 our existence. 



Now, is there any use in knowing that ? I think there is. In the first place, no 

 knowledge that bears upon human life is useless, even though we do not at the 

 moment see the practical application to which we can put it. A discovery always 

 turns to account in some way. The most important mechanical inventions owe 

 their origin to purely mathematical theories which the authors of them never dreamt 

 of so applying. In the next place, it is only by observing men in masses, and with 

 the aid of all such helps to accuracy as we can command, that we can fairly appre- 

 ciate the influence of general causes, whether material or moral, on individuals. 

 Take a town in which a thoroughly good system of drainage has been established : 

 you want to leam what has been the effect of that system on health. Question 

 each person or eacli family separately, you will probably get very conflicting and 

 dubious testimony ; but register the deaths and causes of death, compare them with 

 what they were before, and with similar returns in other places, and the decrease 

 will give you at once a measure of what has been effected. And, lastly, of that 

 large class of human evils which are reparable as well as preventible — evils affecting 

 not life but property, or affecting life in its relation to property — there are very few 

 to which the principle of insurance may not be applied. Now what does insurance 

 mean ? It is the opposite of gambling. The gambler, desiring to gain something 

 that is not his, risks in return something of that which he actually possesses. The 

 insurer, seeking to preserve that which he has, submits to a certain small fixed 

 deduction, and thereby precludes the occurrence of a much larger possible loss. The 

 one purposely increases the hazards of life, the other purposely diminishes them. 

 Now if, as I believe to be indisputable, a sense of security is one of the first requi- 

 sites both for material improvement and moral development, whatever creates or 

 strengthens that sense of security is an element of human progress ; and when a 

 proprietor has guaranteed himself, according to the nature of his property, against 

 fire, against shipwreck, against loss of stock by disease, or of loss by storm ; still 

 more, when the man who lives by his industry has secured himself, not indeed 

 against premature death, but against that which to such persons having families 

 is the sharpest pang of premature death, the dread of leaving unprovided for those 

 whose existence is bound up with his own, it is difficult to estimate, by any tests 

 or results that can be shown on paper, the amount of good which is practically 

 effected ; for that gain must be measured not by the number of persons actually 

 saved from distress, but by the infinitely greater number saved from the apprehen- 

 sion of distress, the fear being often as bad as the thing feared. It is not easy to 

 overrate the benefit which the modern practice of insurance has conferred and will 

 confer upon mankind. And why, in opening this Statistical Section, do I refer to it ? 

 Because it is a practice founded in its very nature on statistical inquiries, and which 

 without such inquiries could not have existed. 



It remains only to speak of a few desiderata — a few things wanting to be done. 

 In England our chief defect is the absence of agricultural statistics. That is a 

 question which has been long before Parliament. The difficulty of collecting such 

 tacts as are really wanted does not seem to be great; but between prejudices on 

 both sides, statisticians asking too much, and farmers unreasonably jealous of giving 

 any information, the thing has always fallen through. I hope in that respect the 

 new Parliament may be more fortunate than its predecessor. I ought also to note 

 as inconvenient in the highest degree the excessive complication of our English 

 weights and measures. They are probably by far the worst in Europe in that re- 

 spect. But I note that fault in no very sanguine spirit as to a remedy being applied. 

 Our national peculiarities, a great indifference to simplicity and uniformity, and a 

 dislike to changing anything to which we have once become accustomed, and the 

 total absence of any strong interest in the subject, except among a few individuals, 

 place reform in this matter wholly beyond my expectations. Parliament, no doubt, 



