TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 729 



Section F.— ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS. 

 President of the Section — Edward W. Brabrook, C.B, 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10. 



The President delivered the following Address : — 



It is a coincidence, which has great interest for me personally, that the honour of 

 being President of this Section has fallen to nie in the last year of my engageinent 

 in the public service. I am now in the sixty-tifth year of my age and the thirty- 

 tilth of ray connection with the Eegistry of Friendly Societies, and in a few 

 months the guillotine of the Order in Council will fall, and the Department and 

 its present head will be severed. The consequences are not so tragic as they 

 sound, for the Department will at once find a new head, and the old head will 

 contrive to maintain a separate existence. I therefore meet the stroke of fate with 

 cheerlulness ; for I am strongly of opinion that the arrangements for retirement 

 from the Civil Service of the country are as wise as they are liberal. It is a good 

 thing that the place of a man whose ideas have grown old and become fixed, and 

 whose long service indisposes him to entertain new ones, sliould be taken by a 

 younger man anxious to make his own mark on the administration of his depart- 

 ment. Again, the prospect of promotion opened up by the limited term of 

 service of the older men is a distinct inducement to able and ambitious young 

 men to devote themselves to their country's service. I have lately had occasion to 

 give minute and careful attention to one branch of this important question, and 

 the study of the whole subject which has thus been rendered necessary has 

 strongly confirmed the conviction I previously entertained that the system of 

 retirement which now prevails greatly tends to promote the efficiency of the 

 Civil Service and tlie interests of ihe country. I do not apologise for saying 

 this much on a subject into which I was led by an observation tlmt_ concerns 

 me personally, for the means of securing efficiency in the public service is an 

 important economic question. 



The coincidence to which I refer tempts me to choose as the principal subject 

 of the Address which I am permitted and enjoined to deliver to the Section on this 

 occasion that small corner of the great field of Economics in which I have been a 

 day labourer for so long, and I am not able to resist the temptation. My piece of 

 allotment ground, if I may so call it, is that which is devoted to the cultivation 

 of thrift, or of economy in the popular rather than the scientific sense. The 

 temptation is strengthened by the circumstance that that subject has rarely been 

 treated by my predecessors. Sir Pvobert Giffen in his Address of 1887 referred to 

 it, and Sir Charles Fremantle in 1 802 treated it at somewhat greater length. In 

 old times, when the Chair of this Section was more frequently occupied bythe 

 practical statesman than by the professed economist, there were passing allusions 

 to it by Henry Fawcett in 1872, William Edward Forster in 1873, and Sir Puchard 

 Temple in 18^4; but ip mpyp recent years the accomplished ecqnpw^sts w^iO 



