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Mr. Buckle observes in a note that “this is even true, 
notwithstanding the occurrence of a revolution which con- 
vulsed society, and brought in a new dynasty.” The net 
result is that, according to Mr. Bucklers philosophy, the laws 
which regulate the moral world are more uniform in their 
operation than those which govern the physical universe. 
Unfortunately, I have not the means of examining into 
these very curious statistics. I am compelled, therefore, to 
assume that they are both correct, and correctly stated. But 
for the previous reason, that all statistics must represent the 
complex results of the conjoint action of the rational will, and 
of the motives which act on that will, I must demur to the 
conclusion which Mr. Buckle would draw from the alleged 
uniformity. In good truth, if his theory is correct, it will be 
the duty of her Majesty's Government to introduce a reform 
bill of a wholly different kind from any legislation which has 
yet been attempted in the history of man, and, by negotia- 
tion, to try to persuade all foreign Governments to imitate 
their example. This reform bill must enact, that all such ex- 
pressions as virtue, vice, duty, obligation, right, &c. &c. — in a 
word, the whole class of similar forms of conception which 
the stupidity of man has so deeply impressed on human speech — 
be removed out of the English language with all convenient 
speed. As the French revolutionists in their day substituted 
a new calendar in place of the old and effete Christian one, so 
human language will have to undergo a purgation from such 
unmeaning terms, in conformity with the new gospel accord- 
ing to statistics and the principles of the Positive philosophy, 
the proclamation of which is to herald in the true Millennium. 
The necessity of doing so will certainly arise if man's moral 
and spiritual nature is bound by laws more invariable in their 
results than those which regulate his physical being. 
It is certainly difficult to conceive of any cause which can 
connect the number of male deaths in Paris with the number 
of crimes committed throughout France ; and I apprehend, if 
such an invariable ratio exists, it must involve a problem in- 
finitely more complicated than the solution of that which tests 
the endurance of the powers of the greatest mathematicians ; 
viz., the determination of the conjoint influence of a number 
of variables, varying as each other. If this law of variation 
exists in rerum naturd , we cannot help being struck by the 
remarkable fact that, according to these statistics, it is not the 
number of actual crimes committed in France which vary in 
a direct ratio to the number of the male deaths in Paris, but 
that it is the number of persons “who are accused of the crime,'' 
of whom a certain proportion are doubtless innocent. The 
