174 KEPORT — 1873. 



ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS. 



Address by the Right Hon. W. E. Forstek, M.F., President of the Section. 



[Spoken on Monday, September 22nd.] 



Your Council have asked me to take the responsible and honourable position of 

 being the President of one of your Sections. I am quite sure that that honour 

 cannot have been conferred upon me owing to any special fitness on my part, but 

 rather from two facts — the one that I do happen to have taken an interest in the 

 questions that have come before this Section for many years, and the other that 1 

 am a Bradford townsman and a Bradford Member. As a Bradford man I was so 

 glad to do what I could to welcome the Association, that I felt I could not refuse 

 ot try to perform any duty that wns imposed upon me ; but I must acknowledge 

 that in attempting to do so I have found special grounds of unfitness. The fact is 

 that my time and thoughts are so occupied with other pressing matters that I 

 really have not been able to prepare this address with that care and thought, or to 

 bestow that pains in expressing what I have to say, that I know is due to so 

 distinguished an audience. I merely make this remark (for I do not want to take 

 up your time by apologies) to explain why I have not followed the usual course 

 and brought forward a prepared written address, and why I have thus been obliged 

 to ask you to let me make a speech instead of reading a paper. I do not deny that 

 the accident of my being connected with the Government does not specially tit me 

 for this duty. In this Section we deal, and we must deal, with politics. Under 

 our title, that of Economic Science and Statistics, there is hardly any question of 

 political discussion, hardly any immediate question of pressing legislation, which 

 may not be brought within its deliberations. iVnd that has been proved by you ; 

 for if you look at your own ' .Jom-nal ' you will see that such political questions 

 (pressing questions, and I may say burning questions) have been successively 

 brought before you, as the question of the income tax, the amalgamation of rail- 

 ways, education (of which last I am not unconscious of the difllcidties), and many 

 other matters that excite great interest and might be made use of, but I am quite 

 sure they wiU not at this Association be made use of, for party purposes. But it 

 certainly, as a general rule, does not become any man who happens to have the 

 honour of being a member of the Ministry to make suggestions with regard to 

 political measures, unless he is prepared to bring them forward, and press them 

 upon the responsibility of Government. It rather becomes such members of the 

 Ministry to hear suggestions, to listen to them, and carefully consider them. A 

 man who is a member of the Cabinet must also recollect that he must consider his 

 colleagues, and must be very careful to say nothing that will commit them. 

 However, care in these matters may be pushed too far ; and as I am here now all I 

 can do is to ask you to forget, as I have tried to do, that I am connected with the 

 Government, and to remember that in what I now say I commit no one but myself. 

 I think this question will occur to many of you, as it did to me — Why, in this 

 Association, do we deal with politics ? What business have we to have such a 

 Section as this ? why should we discuss political matters ? what has the discussion 

 of politics to do with the meetings of a scientific congress ? There is an immediate 

 answer to this question ; and that is, that after all there is a science in politics. If 

 the political theorist — and I do not use the word as a word of reproach — but if the 

 political thinker misconceives or misstates or mistakes his facts or his statistics, he 

 as surely fails in evolving any thought of value as does the student of physical 

 science who generalizes from a partial or imperfect series of experiments. In like 

 manner, if the practical politician, in attempting to apply the principles of economic 

 science, breaks the laws of that science (for instance, the laws of political economy), 

 the result will be that he will pay the penalty in the failm-e of his political 

 measures, as certainly as does the practical mechanic or chemist who ignores the 

 laws of chemistiy or those regulating the application of mechanical forces. But it 

 may be said that although this is true, such is the immense range which our Section 

 would extend over, that there would be a danger in its taking up too much of our 

 attention, and that these subjects had better be loft to the kindred Association 



