Part 12

Gentlemen,—The standing toast, after that of the Royal Family, at all our public dinners, is “The Army and Navy;” and it is never given without calling forth proud and grateful feelings, for Englishmen have reason to be proud of the condition of these services, and of the deeds which they have achieved, and cause to be grateful for the benefits which have been secured to them by their soldiers and sailors, who have been drawn from all ranks and classes of society, and have devoted their lives to their country. We hear sometimes complaints of the expense which these services entail, and must certainly regret that such sacrifices should be necessary; but on the whole the public spirit with which the nation is determined, through good and evil report, to maintain the efficiency of these establishments, is a most gratifying proof of its soundness at heart and the shrewdness of its instinct. It has lately come forward, and placed at the service of the Queen, Volunteer Corps to act as an auxiliary to the regular Army and Militia, in case of danger to our shores; and the rapidity with which this movement has developed itself has been the subject of universal and just admiration. We have witnessed this day a scene which will never fade from the memory of those who had the good fortune to be present—the representatives of the independence, education, and industry of this country in arms, to testify their devotion to their country, and their readiness to lay down their lives in its defence. The Volunteer force exceeds already 130,000 men; and to what extent this country is capable of exerting itself in real danger is shown by the number of Volunteers, which in 1804 reached the extraordinary figure of 479,000! We are apt to forget, however, that, in contrast with every other country of the world, all our services are composed exclusively of volunteers: the Navy, Coast-Guard, Coast Volunteers, Army, Militia, Yeomanry, Constabulary. May the noble and patriotic spirit which such a fact reveals remain ever unimpaired! And may God’s blessing, of which this nation has seen such unmistakable evidence, continue to rest upon these voluntary services! I beg to couple the toast with the names of the First Lord of the Admiralty the Duke of Somerset, and Sir John Burgoyne.

4.

I am much obliged to you for your kindness in drinking my health. I feel proud to have, by the vote of this distinguished Corporation, been re-elected its Master—an office of annual tenure, which does not tax very hard the energies of the holder, as the real work is admirably done by the Deputy Master and the Elder Brethren; but which is of the highest interest to whoever reflects upon the important and useful duties which are performed by the Corporation, the proper performance of which has so great an influence on the commercial prosperity not only of this metropolis, but of the country at large.

I cannot meet you to-day without having one recalled to my memory who used to sit on my left hand on all former occasions, and who was honoured and beloved by this Corporation, and justly so, as its Deputy Master. Captain Shepheard was one of those unobtrusive but noble characters whose sterling qualities of head and heart secured to him the confidence of all who knew him; and I can appeal to no greater proof of the estimation in which he was held than the fact that he was at once Deputy Master of this Corporation, Chairman of the East India Company, and Chairman of the Hudson’s Bay Company. His successor, like himself, is an Aberdeenshire man, but, unlike him, has passed his life in the Royal Navy, and not the merchant service. I can wish him no better success than to possess the approbation of his brethren in an equal degree with his predecessor! I propose to you to drink his health, and Prosperity to the Corporation of the Trinity House.

5.

We are honoured by the presence of Her Majesty’s Ministers. The Corporation is much gratified at their having found it possible, amidst the many avocations and duties which so peculiarly press upon them during the Parliamentary season, to devote an evening to the Trinity House. I propose to you to drink their health. We can wish them nothing better than good health, to enable them to withstand the fatigues of their laborious and harassing life; and by making the fullest use of their talents and energies, to gain that public recognition and confidence upon which so much of their success and usefulness must depend. This is not a political meeting, and we cautiously abstain from alluding to politics; whilst, therefore, the Ministers escape our criticism, they must also forego our praise; but we can give them what may be more valuable to them than either—the expression of our esteem and good will.

“Lord Palmerston and Her Majesty’s Ministers.”

6.

We must not omit to acknowledge the presence of some of our Honorary Brethren, whose admission to our body sheds lustre upon the Corporation. The known presence of their names upon our Roll gives the public an assurance that we are well thought of and well looked after by some of the best in the land.

I beg to drink to the health of Lord Derby and the Honorary Brethren.

7.

Brethren of the Trinity House,—Let us, before separating, thank our guests for the honour they have done and the pleasure they have given us by their presence at our annual dinner; and let us drink to their health and happiness. I beg to couple this toast with the name of the Duke of Newcastle.

ON OPENING THE

INTERNATIONAL STATISTICAL CONGRESS.

[HELD IN LONDON, JULY 16TH, 1860.]

GENTLEMEN,—

The Statistical Congress of All Nations has been invited by the Government to hold its fourth meeting in this metropolis, in conformity with the wishes expressed by the late Congress held at Vienna in 1857. Although under these circumstances it would have been more properly within the province of a member of the Government, and Minister of the Crown, to fill this Chair, and open the proceedings of the day, as has been the case in previous meetings of the Congress in other places, the nature of the institutions and the habits of the people of the country in which this Assembly was to take place could not fail to make itself felt and to influence its organization. We are a people possessing and enjoying the most intense political life, in which every question of interest or importance to the nation is publicly canvassed and debated; the whole nation, as it were, from the highest to the lowest, takes an active part in these debates, and arrives at a judgment with regard to them, on the collective result of the thoughts and opinions thus called forth.

This Congress could therefore only be either a private meeting of the delegates of different Governments, discussing special questions of interest in the midst of the general bustle of political activity, or it had to assume a public and a national character, addressing itself to the public at large, and inviting its co-operation. The Government have chosen the latter alternative, and have been met by the readiest response from all sides. They have, I think, wisely chosen; for it is of the utmost importance to the object the Congress has in view—namely, not only the diffusion of statistical information, but also the acquisition of a general acknowledgment of the usefulness and importance of this branch of human knowledge—that the public, as a whole, should take up the questions which are intended to be investigated, and should lend its powerful aid.

Gentlemen, this explains, and must serve as an apology for, my presuming to hold the post of your President, for which I otherwise feel full well my unworthiness. When, however, the Commissioners for the organization of the Congress expressed to me their desire that I should do so, I felt it incumbent upon me not to withhold my individual co-operation, carrying with it, as it would, an assurance to the British people that the object of the Meeting was one which had enlisted the sympathy of their Queen, and testifying to the foreign delegates the esteem in which she holds them personally, and her appreciation of the science which they serve.

Let me now welcome them to this country, and welcome them on behalf of this country. It is here that the idea of an International Statistical Congress took its origin, when delegates and visitors from all nations had assembled to exhibit in noble rivalry the products of their science, skill, and industry, in the Great Exhibition of 1851; it is here that Statistical Science was earliest developed; and Dr. Farr has well reminded us that England has been called, by no less an authority than Bernoulli, “the cradle of political arithmetic,” and that we may even appeal to our Domesday Book as one of the most ancient and complete monuments of the science in existence. It is this country also which will and must derive the greatest benefits from the achievements of this science, and which will consequently have most cause to be grateful to you for the result of your labours.

Gentlemen, old as your science is, and undeniable as are the benefits which it has rendered to mankind, it is yet little understood by the multitude, new in its acknowledged position amongst the other sciences, and still subject to many vulgar prejudices.

It is little understood; for it is dry and unpalatable to the general public in its simple arithmetical expressions, representing living facts (which, as such, are capable of arousing the liveliest sympathy) in dry figures and tables for comparison. Much labour is required to wade through endless columns of figures, much patience to master them, and some skill to draw any definite and safe conclusions from the mass of material which it presents to the student; while the value of the information offered depends exactly upon its bulk, increasing in proportion with its quantity and comprehensiveness.

It has been little understood, also, from the peculiar and often unjustifiable use which has been made of it. For the very fact of its difficulty, and the patience required in reading up and verifying the statistical figures which may be referred to by an author in support of his theories and opinions, protect him, to a certain extent, from scrutiny, and tempt him to draw largely upon so convenient and available a capital. The public generally, therefore, connect in their minds statistics, if not with unwelcome taxation (for which they naturally form an important basis), certainly with political controversies, in which they are in the habit of seeing public men making use of the most opposite statistical results with equal assurance in support of the most opposite arguments. A great and distinguished French Minister and statesman is even quoted as having boasted of the invention of what he is said to have called “l’Art de grouper les Chiffres.” But if the same ingenuity and enthusiasm which may have suggested to him this art should have tempted him or others, as historians, to group facts also, it would be no more reasonable to make the historical facts answerable for the use made of them than it would be to make statistical science responsible for many an ingenious financial statement.

Yet this science has suffered materially in public estimation by such use, although the very fact that statesmen, financiers, physicians, and naturalists should seek to support their statements and doctrines by statistics shows conclusively that they all acknowledge them as the foundation of truth; and this ought, therefore, to raise, instead of depressing, the science in the general esteem of the public.

Statistical Science is, as I have said, comparatively new in its position amongst the sciences in general; and we must look for the cause of this tardy recognition to the fact that it has the appearance of an incomplete science, and of being rather a helpmate to other sciences than having a right to claim that title for itself. But this is an appearance only. For if pure statistics abstain from participating in the last and highest aim of all science (viz. the discovering and expounding the laws which govern the universe), and leave this duty to their more favoured sisters the natural and the political sciences, this is done with conscious self-abnegation, for the purpose of protecting the purity and simplicity of their sacred task—the accumulation and verification of facts, unbiassed by any consideration of the ulterior use which may, or can, be made of them.

Those general laws, therefore, in the knowledge of which we recognize one of the highest treasures of man on earth, are left unexpressed, though rendered self-apparent, as they may be read in the uncompromising, rigid figures placed before him.

It is difficult to see how, under such circumstances, and notwithstanding this self-imposed abnegation, Statistical Science, as such, should be subject to prejudice, reproach, and attack; and yet the fact cannot be denied.

We hear it said that its prosecution leads necessarily to Pantheism, and the destruction of true religion, as depriving, in man’s estimation, the Almighty of His power of free self-determination, making His world a mere machine working according to a general prearranged scheme, the parts of which are capable of mathematical measurement, and the scheme itself of numerical expression!—that it leads to fatalism, and therefore deprives man of his dignity, of his virtue and morality, as it would prove him to be a mere wheel in this machine, incapable of exercising a free choice of action, but predestined to fulfil a given task and to run a prescribed course, whether for good or for evil.

These are grave accusations, and would be terrible indeed if they were true. But are they true? Is the power of God destroyed or diminished by the discovery of the fact that the earth requires three hundred and sixty-five revolutions upon its own axis to every revolution round the sun, giving us so many days to our year, and that the moon changes thirteen times during that period; that the tide changes every six hours; that water boils at a temperature of 212° according to Fahrenheit; that the nightingale sings only in April and May; that all birds lay eggs; that a hundred and six boys are born to every hundred girls? Or is man a less free agent because it has been ascertained that a generation lasts about thirty years; that there are annually posted at the Post-offices the same number of letters on which the writer had forgotten to place any address; that the number of crimes committed under the same local, national, and social conditions is constant; that the full-grown man ceases to find amusement in the sports of the child?

But our Statistical Science does not even say that this must be so; it only states that it has been so, and leaves it to the naturalist or political economist to argue that it is probable, from the number of times in which it has been found to be so, that it will be so again, as long as the same causes are operating. It thus gave birth to that part of Mathematical Science called the calculation of probabilities, and even established the theory that in the natural world there exist no certainties at all, but only probabilities. Although this doctrine, destroying man’s feeling of security to a certain extent, has startled and troubled some, it is no less true that, whilst we may reckon with a thoughtless security on the sun rising to-morrow, this is only a probable event, the probability of which is capable of being expressed by a determined mathematical fraction. Our insurance offices have, from their vast collection of statistical facts, established, to such a precision, the probable duration of man’s life, that they are able to enter with each individual into a precise bargain on the value of this life; and yet this does not imply an impious pretension to determine when the individual is really to die.

But we are met also by the most opposite objection; and statistics are declared _useless_, because they cannot be relied on for the determination of any given cause, and do only establish probabilities where man requires and asks for certainty. This objection is well founded; but it does not affect the science itself, but solely the use which man has in vain tried to make of it, and for which it is not intended. It is the essence of the Statistical Science, that it only makes apparent general laws, but that these laws are inapplicable to any special case; that therefore what is proved to be law in general is uncertain in particular. Herein lies the real refutation also of the first objection; and thus is the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Creator manifested, showing how the Almighty has established the physical and moral world on unchangeable laws, conformable to His eternal nature, while He has allowed to the individual the freest and fullest use of his faculties, vindicating at the same time the majesty of His laws by their remaining unaffected by individual self-determination.

Gentlemen, I am almost ashamed to speak such homely truths (of which I feel myself at best to be a very inadequate exponent) to a meeting like this, including men of such eminence in the science, and particularly in the presence of one who was your first President, M. Quetelet, and from whom I had the privilege, now twenty-four years ago, to receive my first instruction in the higher branches of mathematics—one who has so successfully directed his great abilities to the application of the science to those social phenomena, the discovery of the governing laws of which can only be approached by the accumulation and reduction of statistical facts.

It is the social condition of mankind, as exhibited by those facts, which forms the chief object of the study and investigation undertaken by this Congress; and it hopes that the results of its labours will afford to the statesman and legislator a sure guide in his endeavours to promote social development and happiness. The importance of these international Congresses in this respect cannot be overrated. They not only awaken public attention to the value of these pursuits, bring together men of all countries who devote their lives to them, and who are thus enabled to exchange their thoughts and varied experiences; but they pave the way to an agreement amongst different governments and nations to follow up these common inquiries, in a common spirit, by a common method, and for a common end.

It is only in the largest number of observations that the law becomes apparent; and the truth becomes more and more to be relied upon, the larger the amount of facts accurately observed which form the basis of its elucidation. It is consequently of the highest importance that observations identical in character should embrace the largest field of observation attainable. It is not sufficient, however, to collect the statistical facts of one class, over the greatest area, and to the fullest amount, but we require, in order to arrive at sound conclusions as to the influences operating in producing these facts, the simultaneous collection of the greatest variety of facts,—the statistics of the increase of population, of marriages, births and deaths, of emigration, disease, crime, education and occupation, of the products of agriculture, mining, and manufacture, of the results of trade, commerce, and finance. Nor, while their comparison becomes an essential element in the investigation of our social condition, does it suffice to obtain these observations as a whole, but we require also, and particularly, the comparison of these same classes of facts in different countries, under the varying influences of political and religious conditions, of occupation, races, and climates. And even this comparison of the same facts in different localities does not give us all the necessary material from which to draw our conclusions; for we require, as much as anything else, the collection of observations of the same classes of facts, in the same localities, and under the same conditions, but at different times. It is only the element of time, in the last instance, which enables us to test progress or regress—that is to say, life.

Thus the physician, by feeling the pulse of the greatest number of individuals coming under his observation, old and young, male and female, and at all seasons, arrives at the average number of the pulsations of the heart in man’s normal condition: by feeling the pulse of the same individual under the most varied circumstances and conditions, he arrives at a conclusion on this individual’s pulse; again, by feeling the pulse of the greatest variety of persons suffering from the same disease, he ascertains the general condition of the pulse under the influence of that disease. It is only then that, feeling a particular patient’s pulse, he will be able to judge whether this individual is affected by this peculiar disease, as far as that can be ascertained by its influence on the pulse.

But all these comparisons of the different classes of facts under different local conditions and at different times, of which I have been speaking, depend, not only as to their usefulness and as to the ease with which they can be undertaken, but even as to the possibility of undertaking them at all, on the similarity—nay, congruity—of the method employed, and the expressions, figures, and conditions selected, under which the observations have been taken. Does, then, the world at large not owe the deepest obligations to a Congress such as the one I am addressing, which has made it its special task to produce this assimilation and to place at the command of man the accumulated experience upon his own condition, scientifically elaborated and reduced in a manner to enable the meanest intellect to draw safe conclusions?

Gentlemen, the Congress has at its various meetings succeeded in doing a great deal in this direction: the official statistics of all countries have been improved; and in regard to the Census, the recommendations of the Brussels meeting have been generally carried out in a majority of States. I am sorry to have to admit the existence of some striking exceptions in England in this respect; for instance, the Census of Great Britain and Ireland was not taken on precisely the same plan in essential particulars, thereby diminishing its value for general purposes. The judicial statistics of England and Wales do not show a complete comparative view of the operation of our judicial establishments; nor, while we are in all the departments of the State most actively engaged in the preparation of valuable statistics, can we deny certain defects in our returns, which must be traced to the want of such a central authority or Commission as was recommended by the Congress at Brussels and Paris, to direct, on a general plan, all the great statistical operations to be prepared by the various departments. Such a Commission would be most useful in preparing an annual digest of the Statistics of the United Kingdom, of our widely scattered Colonies, and of our vast Indian empire. From such a digest the most important results could not fail to be elicited.