TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 189 
schools and universities, in far larger proportion than they now afford it; for they 
would so supply new faculties of perception and persuasion to the political aspirant, 
whom they might train to marshal facts for the elucidation of economic questions, 
and apply established principles in the novel emergencies which perpetually test 
the quality of statesmanship; and so, promoting an attempt to found. legislation 
on a scientific basis, or, at least, to have it conducted with informed and fore- 
thoughtful intelligence, they might take away, in some degree, the reproach of the 
famous Chancellor-— 
“Quam parvula sapientid regitur mundus !” 
There are, no doubt, subjects on which the law-maker may decide promptly and 
on the first impression; but on most of those which are really important and 
permanently affect the general interest, he should seek the help which the statisti- 
cian can afford by casting light from the past on the dim pathways of the future, 
if he would avoid perfunctory and haphazard legislation, issuing often in serious 
mischief, and necessitating attempts at unsatisfactory amendment, which he need 
never have essayed if he had allowed that light to lead him to an appreciation of 
the difficulties in his way and the means to master them. 
_ Still further, the statistical method may be employed beyond the bounds of mu- 
nicipal arrangements, and made to operate for the benefit of that great community of 
nations, ever more closely approximated to each other by the practical annihilation 
of space and time which has been accomplished by the railroad and the steamship. 
It may assist the jurist in dealing with the vexed questions of international law 
and preparing the way for that progressive agreement as to the reciprocal claims 
and duties of civilized states ; and this, though it cannot, perhaps, whilst man is man 
subdue the turbulence of ambition or end the crimes and calamities of war, may 
promote, at least, an approach to that “federation of the world,” which may be 
delayed or forbidden by human pride and passion, but is dictated by the highest 
interests of mankind. 
But, further still, there are collateral advantages which statistical inquiry affords, 
in bringing together, to such a meeting as this, men of science and men of the 
world (the professor, the actuary, and the politician), who find the occasion of union 
and mutual benefit in a pursuit which exercises at once the student’s capacities of 
intelligent research and logical deduction, and aids, as I have shown, to a happy 
issue the best efforts of those who move in the busiest and the noblest spheres of 
active citizenship. 
And, even more widely, it promotes the diffusion of intelligence and the 
unity of intellectual effort throughout the earth, as in the case of the Interna- 
tional Statistical Congress, which was originated at the London Exhibition of 
1851, and has assembled successively in Brussels, in Paris, in Vienna, in London, 
in Florence, at the Hague, and, lastly, in St. Petersburgh. At those meetings 
various countries have been represented by delegates from their Governments and 
by men of science, with the object of discovering the best modes of statistical 
inquiry, of ascertaining the facts capable of numerical expression which can be 
collected in all civilized communities, and of establishing a world-wide uniformity 
of statement, tabulation, and publication of those facts, giving a more exact and 
scientific character to results, and making them more available for universal useful- 
ness. At the last Session, the eighth of the series, in St. Petersburgh (of which I 
should be glad, if I had time, to give some account froma Report of Mr. Hammick, 
one of the foremost of living statisticians, with which I have been favoured), not- 
withstanding the distance from which they came, and the dangers they encoun- 
tered from cholera and otherwise, 128 foreign members attended from almost every 
country in Europe, from the United States of America, from Brazil, Egypt, and 
Japan. There were 860 Russian members, including the first scientific men and 
University professors from all parts of the empire. The Grand Duke Constantine 
presided and opened the proceedings in a forcible address. The Emperor gave his 
best assistance in every way, and the meeting was most harmonious and successful. 
I cannot attempt even to indicate the nature and the fruits of its important labours; 
and I refer to it only that I may illustrate, by a late and conspicuous example, the 
mode in which the prosecution of statistical studies may tend to promote the good 
understanding of Governments, to dissipate the evil prejudices which have so 
often held nations in unnatural and absurd antagonism, to diffuse the highest 
