Section F.— ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS. 

 President of the Section — Professor J. K. Ingram, LL.D., F.T.C.D., M.E.I.A 



THURSDAY, AUGUST 15, 1878. 



Professor Ingram gave the following Address : — 



Had I been called upon at any other time to preside over this Section, I should 

 have followed the example of most of my predecessors, in selecting as the subject 

 of the discourse which it is usual to deliver from this chair, some one of the 

 special economic questions of the day, which my knowledge might have enabled 

 me most adequately, or, let me rather say, least inadequately to treat. But I have 

 felt that the matter with which I should deal has been practically determined for 

 me beforehand. An important crisis in the history of our Section has taken place. 

 Its claim to form a part of the British Association has been disputed. Some of 

 the cultivators of the older branches of research but half recognize the right of 

 Political Economy and Statistics to citizenship in the commonwealth of science ; 

 and it is not obscurely intimated on their part that these studies would do well to 

 relinquish pretensions which cannot be sustained, and proceed, with or without 

 shame, to take the lower room to which alone they are entitled. 



How far this sentiment is entertained by those who would be recognized as 

 the best representatives of the mathematical, physico-chemical and biological 

 sciences, I am unable to say. But it is natural to suppose that no one clothed 

 with an official character in the Association could have assumed towards us such 

 an attitude as I have described, unless supported by a considerable weight of 

 opinion amongst those within the body who are regarded as competent judges. 

 Still more — and this is what lends a peculiar gravity to the incident — such a step 

 could scarcely have been taken if the general mass of the intelligent public enter- 

 tained strong convictions as to the genuinely scientific character of political 

 economy, as it is usually professed and understood amongst us. It is, in fact, well 

 known that there is a good deal of scepticism current on this question. There 

 may be seen in various quarters evidences sometimes of contemptuous rejection of 

 its claims, sometimes of uneasy distrust as to their validity. And even amongst 

 those who admit its services in the past, there is a disposition to regard it as 

 essentially effete, and as having no scientific or practical future before it. 



When some of our leading economists met not long ago to celebrate the cen- 

 tenary of the publication of the ' Wealth of Nations,' it was plain from the tone 

 of most of the speakers that the present position of their studies, as regards their 

 general acceptation and public influence, was considered to be far from satis- 

 factory. 



" To those who are interested in economic science," says a recent writer in 

 ' Mind,' " few things are more noticeable than the small hold which it has upon 

 the thoughts of our generation. Legislation has been directly influenced by it in 

 the past, and the results of the application of its doctrines are manifest in every 

 department of our laws ; yet in spite of its triumph in this region, we find a wide- 

 spread tendency to look on its teaching with suspicion." 



" I seem to observe," said Professor Cairnes in 1870, " in the literature and 

 1878. TT 



