133 REPORT — 18G7. 



ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS. 

 Address hy M. E. Grant Ditff, M.P., President of the Section. 



Ladies and Gentlemen, — It has been the custom to open tlio proceedings of this 

 Section by an address, and it has been the custom that that address should be a 

 brief one. I propose, with your permission, to follow both these good customs. 

 This department of the British Association differs from the others. Tliey are oc- 

 cupied exclusively with the study of external natiu-e. We are occupied, as has been 

 truly said, with external nature only in so far as it exerts an influence on the 

 human mind. They treat of physical sciences. Our Section throws its roots, so 

 to speak, deep down among the physical sciences, but is itself devoted to moral 

 science. Looked at in another light, our pursuits form the debateable land between 

 the men of thought and the men of action. In theorj^, of course, we are given up 

 exclusively to the examination of thin(/s as they are to science. But do Ave not 

 continually stray over the border line, and wander into the consideration of things 

 as they should he into the domain of the art of legislation and Government ? Those 

 who are familiar with the proceedings of this Section will not, I think, say No ; and 

 this intermediate character of our department accounts, I suppose, for the fact that 

 it is from time to time presided over by Members of Parliament, who, votaries of 

 practical politics, cannot pretend to be teachers of the sciences with which this 

 Section is concerned ; cannot even pretend to be the fellow-labourers of some 

 whom I see around me, but are content be in this field their disciples and fol- 

 lowers. The British Association, founded in 1831, was one of the results of that 

 great upheaval of the national mind, of which the political change which makes 

 the year 1832 so famous was perhaps the most conspicuous symptom. The founda- 

 tion of the Statistical Society, and of our own Section, both of which I trust have 

 done something to help on the forward movement of the time, came shortly after- 

 wards, and the latter of these events must have very nearly sjaichronized with the 

 commencement of that remarkable reactionary movement, which, taking its rise in 

 the common room of Oriel, has since so widely and variously influenced English life. 

 An eminent living writer might find perhaps in this fact another illustration of the 

 operation of Systole and Diastole in human aftairs. Up to 1856, this Section was 

 exclusively occupied with statistics. In that year, the centenary of the publica- 

 tion of Quesnay's Ma.vimes Generales, and 80 years after the appearance of Adam 

 Smith's great work, the kindred subject of Economic Science was wisely added 

 to our programme. Now, then, we are the Section of Economic Science and 

 Statistics. What do these terms mean, and with what sort of subjects will chance 

 visitors who stray into these regions from more popular Sections find iis dealing 

 during the next" few days ? They will find us, in our character of students of 

 Economic Science, dealing with all the phenomena which attend upon, and the 

 principles which regulate the production, the distribution, and the exchange of 

 wealth. If they are qTiite unfamiliar with those inquiries, they may come preju- 

 diced against us as cold, and liard, and selfish. We deserve, gentlemen, no such 

 character. The considerations to which we call attention, the laws which we 

 point out, must be taken account of by the most humane and by the most imagina- 

 tive, if their attempts at world-bettering are not to shiver against the realities of 

 life. All human society, as has been well'said, rests on a material foundation, "and 

 beneath all systems of Government, and all schemes of public morality, there lies 

 the science of the wealth of nations." The laws which wo enunciate "are no more 

 and no less hard or imperative than unj of the laws with which other Sections 

 have to do. " What," asked Mr. Mill in the House of Commons last year, "is 

 more unfeeling than the attraction of gravitation ? " If, however, gentlemen, we 

 claim for Economic Science a very high place, we do not exaggerate its importance. 

 No wise economist ever pretended to explain more than a A'ery limited number of 

 the complicated problems of society and life?. No wise economist ever laid himself 

 open to the denunciations levelled by M. Edgar Quinet in his recent brilliant work 

 on the Ereuch Revolution against those who fondly fancy that they can account on 

 economical principles alone for that great moral and political earthquake. There 

 surely never was a time in which it was more plainly necessary to popularize this 



