International Statistical Uniformity. 37 



facts and figures should be published before interest in the 

 subject of inquiry has evaporated. The importance of being 

 able to procure readily and easily any essential information, 

 by leading-article writers, professors, lecturers, (public or 

 university,) and by persons engaged in the education of the 

 masses,, can hardly be over-estimated. If the foregoing 

 allegation had been sustained, complete and correct infor- 

 mation on the subject would have been invaluable to us as a 

 community. It would immediately have led to a search for 

 iiny exceptional circumstances which might produce such a 

 result. The systems of education, state or private ; of reli- 

 gious instruction, and the manner of imparting it ; the 

 method of dealing with " gutter children ;" the laws apply- 

 ing to, and the methods of dealing with, juvenile offenders; 

 the class of prisons they were committed to ; the variety of 

 punishments inflicted ; whether whipping was resorted to, 

 and under what restrictions ; and the arrangements adopted 

 in industrial or reformatory schools ; are all questions which 

 might have been investigated to secure the experience of 

 other countries in which the evil could be proved to be less 

 rampant. Practical knowledge of this description would be 

 most useful in guiding future movement. It would supply 

 a firm basis for legislation, and prevent merely experimental 

 and, possibly, inefficacious action. 



The disappointment arising from the result of this investi- 

 gation naturally led to a consideration of the possibility of 

 suggesting some means by which a certain amount of simi- 

 larity might be secured — not entire uniformity just yet, but 

 enough to make comparisons possible, and render them 

 trustworthy when they were made. 



Comparisons on a large scale do not require to be made 

 continually. They are most useful when they cover a suffi- 

 ciently long period to manifest the action of any new 

 development of the laws, social conditions, resources, or dis- 

 coveries in the countries they refer to ; and yet not so long as 

 to allow such progress to have been made, that the position 

 of any one state at each period of computation should be 

 perhaps more dissimilar than that of the various countries 

 to be contrasted with each other. 



A vast amount of the statistics annually issued have only 

 a departmental interest, and are subdivided only to suit 

 departmental convenience. Another large portion repre- 

 sent the various branches of one subject. Only the aggregate 

 returns into which these should be condensed are required 



