752 ' BEPORT — 1881. 



ing diversities, and tlie law would therefore cbiefly concern new banks. But there 

 would probably soon be a disposition in tlie pre-existing banks to place themselves 

 in conformity with a law so universal and intelligible. 



FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2. 



The President deliA'ered the following Address : — 



The nature of the address with which it is my duty to commence the proceedings 

 to-day, is commanded by circumstances. It must necessarily be historical, and 

 talie the shape of a rapid review of the fortunes of Section F since its came into 

 existence. 



This is, as we all know, the fiftieth anniversary of the British Association, but 

 it is not the fiftieth anniversary of the Section to which we more especially belong. 

 That Section was called into life at the Cambridge meeting in 18.3.3, a year which 

 will be long famous in Enjilish history in connection with a movement of a very 

 different kind, a movement which was, indeed the expression of the distrust 

 excited in many minds bj' our parents. Science and Liberalism. 



We were at first entirely devoted to statistics, to tlie ' investigation,' to use the 

 words of the official recommendation of the Section, ' of facts relating to com- 

 munities of men which are capable of being expressed by numbers, and which 

 promise, when sufficiently multiplied, to indicate general laws,' and Professor 

 Sedgwick, the President of the Association for 18-33, in the address with which he 

 closed the proceedings, carefully limited the functions of the Section to the 

 inquiries which furnish 'the raw material of political economy and political 

 philosophy.' 



Our first President was Mr. Babbage, who lived on into our own times, and 

 whom some who are here present must have known well, whilst among the names 

 of those who gathered round him as a committee were those of Empson, Hallam, 

 Jones, Malthus, and Lubbock. 



Hardly had our Section itself been created than it produced the Statistical 

 Society, which, in the words of a speaker at tlie Edinburgh meeting in 1834, 

 ' acknowledged itself the oflspring of this institution/ and was indeed one of its 

 first definite residts. 



At the Dublin meeting~in 1836, our Section was again presided over by Mr. 

 Babbage, who read a paper upon a subject which was destined to become, some- 

 what later, of great importance, on an experiment, namely, in the creation of 

 co-operative shops for the supplying workmen with the necessaries of life, which, 

 begun as far back as 1812, had come to an end in 1832. 



On this occasion, too, appears, for the first time in our records, the honoured 

 name of Mr. William Bathbone Greg, then a very young man, who became, iu 

 after years, so well known as a writer upon some of the questions with which 

 we are occupied, and wlio contributed a paper on the ' Social Statistics of the 

 Netherlands.' 



We are reminded of the vast changes which have taken place in our times 

 when we observe, that at the Bristol meeting in 1837, Dr. Lardner pointed out as 

 if it was a great matter, that the introduction of railways between various points 

 had actually increased the number of travellers between those points in the 

 proportion of four to one. 



At Liverpool in 1837, a committee was appointed for the advancement of 

 Statistical Science, and the Biitish Association volume for that year contains a 

 report on the statistics of the Deccan by Colonel Sykes, which was creditable for 

 its dav ; but the proceedings of our Section at Newcastle in 18.38 were of little 

 interest. 



In 1839, when we met at Birmingham, we had the honour to have Mr. Hallam 

 for our chairman; but no record of anything which that great historian said or 



