TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 153 



I!ut if, on the one hand, the mere record of bare acts till systematized remains 

 practically useless, and if imperfect or misapplied statistics are misleading, so, on 

 the other hand, principles deduced from purely abstract reasoning upon economical 

 questions (which, unlike pure mathematics, deal with many and varied elements) 

 always require in their application to be constantly tested and retestedby statistics ; 

 for the truths on which they are based are often far from the only truths having 

 a real bearing' on the particular questions. 



As. Sir George Campbell further justly observes : — " It is by collecting, verifying, 

 and classifying facts that we are able to approach economic truth. There was a time 

 when it seems to have been supposed that political economy was a science regulated 

 by natural laws so fixed that safe results could be attained by deductive reasoning. 

 But since it has become apparent that men do not in fact invariably follow the 

 laws of money-making pure and simple, that economic action is affected by moral 

 causes which cannot be exactly measured, it becomes more and more evident that 

 we cannot safely trust to a chain of deduction; we must test every step by an 

 accurate observation of facts, and induction from them. This is, it seems to me, 

 the highest function of statistical science. We recognize that men are not mere 

 machines whose course may be set and whose progress may be calculated by a 

 simple formula. Men are complicated being3, whose minds and motives of action 

 we do not yet thoroughly understand ; we cannot foretell what they will do till 

 we are sure that we know what in fact they actually have done and do in a 

 great variety of circumstances." And therefore deeper reflection and fuller 

 inquiry have often revealed other truths, which in many instances have largely 

 modified and, in some, even to a certain extent reversed the conclusions practically 

 to be deduced in the particular case. 



I will take one striking example of the subsequent large modification, not to say 

 reversal, of the earlier views of political economists, owing to the deeper reflection 

 and especially the wider information brought to bear upon the question by, in the 

 first, one single eminent authority among them. 



Malthus, in his famous work on Population, lays it down as a law that 

 while population naturally increases in a geometrical, subsistence increases in an 

 arithmetical progression only. He was followed in this view by a great majority 

 of the political economists of his day. And Mr. J. S. Mill, in the last edition 

 which I have seen (that of 1862) of his 'Principles of Political Economy,' says, 

 " Having a large family, so far as concerns the public interest, is a thing rather to 

 he discouraged than promoted; " and again, " That the producing of large families 

 ought to be regarded with the same feeling as drunkenness or any other physical 

 excess." Such writings led men to believe that wars and pestilences were sharp but 

 salutary remedies for the great evil to be feared, namely, over-population, and 

 were the sad but indispensable supplements to the inadequate operation of what 

 Malthus and his school called the preventive checks of prudence and morality. 

 We have, indeed, recently had, professedly based on Malthus's doctrines, to which 

 public attention has been recalled, a preventive check of immorality propounded. 

 Put on that I need say no more now than that, however plausible it may sound, 

 it would be sure in the long run to weaken the national strength and impair the 

 national well-being, by lowering the national standard of duty and degrading the 

 national character. History shows how true it is that " righteousness exalteth a 

 nation, while sin is a reproach to any people." 



Put to return to the warnings of Malthus and his school against the danger of 

 over-population. They founded their views almost entirely on deductive reasoning 

 without appealing to any adequate amount of actual experience, and therefore 

 failed to take into account what, in most cases, practically modifies, and even 

 neutralizes, the action of the principles which they set forth. 



Mr. Chadwick demonstrated, in several of his early writings, and especially in 

 that most remarkable work the ' Sanitary Report of 1642,' that excessive sickness, 

 with premature disability and mortality m a population, did not (except, of course, 

 in very extreme cases) tend in general to diminish the aggregate number, but only 

 the average efficiency, of the living, and the .average productiveness of their labour. 

 He showed, with the aid of the comparatively very imperfect statistics then avail- 

 able, that in the unhealthiest districts of the country the proportion of persons 



L877. 12 



