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Section P.— ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS. 

 Presidknt op the SECTioif — The Right Hon. Lord Bkamwell, LL.D., F.R.S.^ 



r.s.s. 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6. 

 The President delivered the following Address : — 



It gives me great pleasure to meet you here to-day as President of this iSection . 

 Forgive me if I trouble you with a purely personal reason — it is that my brother, 

 Sir F. Bramwell, is President of this Association. That is a great distinction, 

 of which he ought to be and is proud, and one in the enjoyment of which I am 

 proud and glad to see him. 



There is another reason, not so purely personal, though somewhat so. At a 

 meeting of this Association nine years ago it was said — and in this Section — not 

 that Political Economy was dead, but that it had never lived — that there never 

 was such a science. This was an awful shock to me, who for nearly two-thirds of 

 a century have been trying to learn something about it, and who have considered, 

 and do consider, that there is no branch of knowledge more important than that 

 of the truths of Political Economy. The argument attracted a good deal of notice, 

 but for my own part I confess I never understood it. It was said that Political 

 Economy was not an independent science, but a branch of one more extensive. It 

 seemed to me as bad an argument as one which should say that ornithology was 

 no science because it was only a part of natural history. 



"Whether Political Economy can be classed under some title comprehending it 

 and other sciences, I know not. Perhaps ' Sociology ' would do. But, whether it 

 can or cannot, it is equally a science, equally a collection of truths relating to a 

 particular subject which constitute the knowledge of that subject. 



The truth is that Political Economy is not only a science, but a necessary 

 science when men have formed themselves into a society. What will be the best 

 way to add to the wealth of a society must be a subject of study by that society 

 which will lay down rules — that is to say, make laws for the purpose— and this is 

 Political Economy. Adam Smith was not the first Political Economist, though 

 well called the father of those rules which now prevail. But rules for the purpose 

 existed before him, the great objection to them being that most of them were 

 wrong. There was a law that the dead should be buried in woollen. The object 

 was the encouragement of sheep-breeding, and the reasons given were such a» 

 would be given nowadays in support of any proposal of protection or bounty for the 

 agriculturist or grazier. Let us see. The most important of our industries is that 

 which works the land. It employs great capital and much labour. If people are 

 buried in woollen, wool will rise in price, sheep will be bred, mutton will be cheaper, 

 and so on. So laws were made for fixing wages — laws were made against regrating^ 

 and forestalling, which, as Adam Smith points out, were laws against providence 

 and thrift — laws which would have made a criminal of Joseph, who saved in the 

 seven abundant years, and showed himself sounder as an economist than our 

 ancestors were. 



Then think of the usury laws. All usury was thought wrong on religious 



