754 EEPORT — 1881. 



the safest, or the most effectual conduct for that purpose.' He concluded by 

 advisinf that we should keep as much as possible within the strict limits of sta- 

 tistics and of economic science as understood by the School to which he belonged. 

 In 1861 we met at Manchester, under the superintendence of Mr. Newraarch, 

 who premising that there was some danger of undue importance being attached to 

 what had been achieved in an age of physical discovery, vindicated the right of 

 economic science and statistical inquiry to a high place amongst the agencies 

 which have most contributed to the great advance which has lately been made by 

 civilized mankind. 



It was a year of important papers ; one on the Progress of Manchester from 

 1840 to 1860, by Mr. David Chadwick ; another by Mr. Molesworth on the Pro- 

 gress of Co-operation in Rochdale ; and a third by Mr., now Sir Edward, Keed, on 

 the Statistics of the Iron-cased Ships of the British Navy, being amongst the most 

 interesting. 



The address of Mr. Edwin Chadwick to this Section in 1862 is not, I think, 

 printed in the annual volume, and Mr. Tite, who presided in 1863, made only a 

 very few observations ; but in both years some good papers were read, one by Mr. 

 Herman Merivale upon Colonization and another by Mr. Dunning Macleod upon 

 Political Economy, in 1862 ; and by Mr. Purdy, on the Decrease of the Agri- 

 cultural Population of England, in 1863. 



The address delivered at Bath by Dr. Farr, in 1864, was one of the best to 

 which, our Section has listened, and well worth recurring to. His object was to. 

 give a brief outline of the condition of statistical science at the time, and he suc- 

 ceeded admirably. It is indeed surprising how much matter of incontestable and 

 permanent value he contrived to pack into twelve pages, and this although he 

 sometimes diverged, perhaps, just a little into politics. 



In 1865 the present Lord Derby again presided over us, treating inter alia the 

 question how far our subjects ought to form part of the business of a strictly 

 scientific Association, and coming to the conclusion that our functions are rather 

 to suggest and stimulate than to originate thought. He further spoke at some 

 length and with many illustrations, of the use of the statistical method. 



In 1866 we met at Nottingham, under the guidance of Professor Thorold 

 Kogers, who discussed several of the questions that were prominent at the time, 

 such as the statistics of the live stock in England, a subject brought into promi- 

 nence by the cattle plague ; the state of the money market in that year of panic, 

 and the fears that were expressed as to to the exhaustion of our coal-supply. I 

 notice too, in his address, a phrase marked by his usual epigrammatic felicity and 

 which should be remembered. 'The economist,' he said, 'is constantly labouring 

 to refute men's hasty sympathies by an appeal to their deliberate reason.' 



In 1867, at Dundee, I had myself the great honour of presiding over your 

 deliberations, and we had a good many interesting papers relating to the statistics 

 of the locality. 



In 1868 our Section was presided over by Mr. Samuel Brown, of the Society 

 of Actuaries, who devoted his address to a rapid survey of the various questions 

 most likely to interest students of our science which had come before the public 

 since the Dundee meeting, viz., to Technical Education, to the relations between 

 Labour and Capital, to the purchase of the Electric Telegraphs by the State, to 

 Weights and Measures, to Monetary Conferences, and to Insurance. Speaking 

 of the latter subject, with which he was exceptionally qualified to deal, he 

 observed : ' Vital statistics ajje now assuming a form which enables the most com- 

 plicated problems of human life to be dealt with as if they were certain and 

 simple events, yet little more than a century has elapsed since the Attorney- and 

 Solicitor-General of that day, when reporting on the application fbr a Eoyal 

 Charter to the first Society formed on scientific principles for the assurance of life, 

 objected to it on the ground that its success must depend on calculations taken on 

 tables of life and death, whereby the chance of mortality is attempted to be 

 reduced to a certain standard. " This is a mere speculation," they observe, " never 

 yet tried in practice, and consequently subject, like all other experiments, to 

 various chances in the execution." ' 



