Agricultural Statistics. 
56T 
agricultural experiments are almost proverbially lax, one-sided, 
and unreliable: either the scale is too small, or tlie conclusion 
too large ; differences of soil, subsoil, climate, altitude, latitude, 
not made allowance for — are not these faults a byword of repres- 
sive caution amongst the agriculturists of our own day ? What 
is the obvious remedy for the one great defect indicated in almost 
every case ? — clearly, breadth of experience, an area adequate to the 
true evolution of the questions sought — a ' field' large enough for 
' fairness and no favour ' — a basis for observation, comparison, 
calculation, and conclusion, wide enough to build up truth on, 
like a pyramid, instead of tottering upon the narrow point of 
guess-work and opinion. 
Examples might be multiplied from almost every branch of 
our national industry, were evidence required of the accession to 
the foresight and security which lie at the root of all successful 
business, afforded by the collection and classification of statistical 
facts. And when we look at what has been done for commerce, at 
our monthly Board of Trade tables of imports and exports, guiding 
the merchant and the manufacturer, at our weekly Bank returns, 
at the daily notices of the fluctuations and transactions in every 
description of stock, English and Foreign, that appears in our 
money-market, and at the avidity with which these data are 
resorted to as essential elements in the practical conduct of his 
business by every banker and commercial man throughout the 
kingdom,* it is scarcely possible, without a feeling approaching 
to shame, to " look upon this picture and on this," as we turn 
* The anxiety for the earlier publication of the Bank returns, even by the space 
of a few days after the weekly accounts are made up, is vividly shown in the 
following extract from a letter addressed, in October last, to the editor of the 
Times, (it being understood that the publication already takes place within three 
days of the time when the account is completed ; — the return ending Saturday 
being available for the directors the following Wednesday, and on Friday evening 
it is sent forth) : — 
" At the present time, when the Bank returns are looked forward to by the 
commercial community with so much interest, you would do them a great service 
if you would lend your powerful advocacy to induce the Bank directors to publish 
their returns somewhat more in the spirit of the age. According to the present 
regulation, the result of the week's movement in the bullion is not known until the 
following Fi-idai/ ; meanwhile rumours supply the place of facts, creating alarm 
and unsettling business. 
" In the present day, when steam and the electric telegraph put us in possession, 
in a few hours, of latest intelligence from distant parts of the globe — when the state 
of the money-market in New York is known almost as soon as the state of the 
bullion in the Bank of England-- surely it is not too much to ask of the Bank 
directors to depart from a plan worth;/ onli/ of the last century, and to furnish the 
public at an earlier date with the actiial state of the bullion in the Bank. 
" The plan I would suggest is, that the returns, instead of being made up as 
now, should be made up on Wednesday evening, and published in the Gazette of 
the following Friday. The directors would be able to deliberate upon them at 
their meeting on Thursday before they are made public, while their early publica- 
tion would tend, in times like the present, to do away with rumours which are far 
more injurious than the worst reality." 
