THE INTERNATIONAL STATISTICAL CONGRESS. THE PRESENT POSITION OF STATISTICAL INQUIRY. (From the Economist.)

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XVII, Issue 1356, 7 December 1860, Page 5

THE INTERNATIONAL STATISTICAL CONGRESS. THE PRESENT POSITION OF STATISTICAL INQUIRY. (From the Economist.)

1 The^ meeting in London, under the Presidency of the Prince Consort, of the fourth session of the International Statistical Congress, has naturally directed a large amount of attention to a branch of inquiry not overlooked or undervalued by ourselves. The Congress itself is a fact and symptom of the present time in many- ways remarkable. The basis of the Association is, that in every second year the several civilised States of the world should be officially invited' by the Government Of some one of them to "send to its capital persons duly accredited and instructed, and supposed to be competent, to enter into disoussions^and conferences relating to the best methods of "promoting statistical investigation^ throughout the whole range of subjects which fall within the province of legislation. Already on three former occasions — viz,, at Brussels in 1853, at Paris in 1855, and at Vienna in 1857 — meetings on tjhi» basis have been held, — have beeu attended by official delegates 'from a considerable number of countries?* European and Transatlantic, — and have issued reports and documents which have commanded, by their icientifio and practical character, a large amount of attention. The meeting which commenced in London on the 16th July, and continued on the five following days, was the fourth repetition of the experiment of » Congress, and we hear oh a'l hands that at no former meeting has the attendance been larger, the proceedings more earnest, or the results more encouraging. The organisation of these meetings is a task imposing great labour, no small expenditure of time, the co operation of hundreds of intelligent men of all countries, and the outlay of no trifling sum of money. But this labour and cost has now been repeated for the fourth time, and wL'l be repeated for the fifth in 1862 at Berlin. Ihe Congress itself, therefore, is a hard fact, testifying by its vitality and success to the existence of aome want so generally felt that even the officia l classes throughout Europe and America are wJlling to depart from then? usual routine, in order to promote the search for some means of meeting that want. In a few words, this want may be said to be the indication oi nothing less than the necessity under which all Governments are rapidly finding themselves placed, <|f understanding as clearly and fuHy as possible the composition of the social forces which, so far, Governments have been assumed to control, but which now, ibost men agree, really control Governments. The ■^orld has got rid of a good many intermediate agencies, all of them supposed originally to be masters, where, in truth, they were even less than servants. The rain and the sun have long passed from under the administration of magicians and fortune tellers ; religion has mostly reduced its pontiffs and priests into simple ininiaters with very circumscribed functions ; commerce has cast aside legislative protection as a reed of the rbttenest fibre ; and now, men are gradually finding out that all attempts at making or administering laws which do not rest upon an accurate view of the social circumstances of the cose, are neither more or less than imposture in one of its most gigantic and perilous forms. I Men are almost finding out, as did the natural philosophers three hundred years ago, that, speaking in a large sense, our social and legislative philosophy is scarcely more than a bundle of general notions and propositions, unfortified by any adequate series of observations made by competent persons, recorded in a satisfactory manner, and analysed and digested by a rigid logic into scientific expressions fairly representing common results. The sense of this great void has during the last ten years become increasingly acute in this and in most other countries. The armoury of the ancient atate.-crft.ft has been found to be almost as supremely effete as the cross-bows of the Crusaders. Crime is no longer to be repressed by mere severity, — Education ia no longer within the control of the maxims which preceded printing, — Law is found to be a science perhaps the most difficult of any, — Justice means more thxn tricks and plausibilities of procedure; — Taxation, Commerce, Trade, Wages, Prices, Police, Competition,/ Possession of Land, — every topic from the greatest' to the least which the old legislators dealt with according to a caprice as absolute as is exercised by the potter over his vessel, — have all been found to have laws of tjieir own, complete and irrefragable. There is already abroad an idea, more or less distinct, of what has been called, — provisionally perhaps,-— Social Science; and so popular is that idea, that in this country we have an Association, progressive and successful, which, by annual meetings in our large towns, seeks by a week of debates and conferences expressly to promote Social Science, — implying in this phrase whatever affects the material, moral, or mental condition of man in civilised society. But the more intelligent cultivators of this new study are painfully sensible that, bo far, they ore mere dwellers upon the threshold of the temple they seek to enter and understand in all its parts. They are oppressed on all sides with suggestions and theoiies, and they find themaelves assailed, even upon the most fundamental points, with hypotheses clearly unsound, but as clearly, unrefutable by means of any positive doctrine resting, upon ample scientific data. The International Statistical Congress has set itself the tos.k of procuring this scientific data ; and in the present state of the world, no higher or more useful service could be undertaken for the furtherance of the best interests of the species. Statistics in social philosophy hold the same place as experiments in natural philosophy. Observations of natural phenomena are among the earliest and most inevitable applications of the faculties of {the human mind. But so long as these observations were capricious, irregular, imperfect, and obscure, they were of no more value in the construction of science than the loose traditions of a Tartar tribe. Men debated on the nature of motion and the composition of matter in the same abstraot and general terms in which we at present discuss the effects to be produced by particular schemes of law, and the operation in actual practice of particular schemes of interference with the economical condition of a people. In the case of the ancient physical philosophy, the a priori view, abstract and genei.il as it was, did undoubtedly contain some portion of the real truth. But, as * whole, that philosophy was no niore than an ingenious mental diversion. For all practical purposes, it was worthless and deceptive. The outaide analogies served very badly as guides to the modification! and cross influences by means of which nature adapts all general laws to her complex machinery. So it is at present with aocial problems. Intelligent men see the phenomena from the outside, — they specu la)te upon the nature of the subtle forces which are at work beneath, — and, led. forward by that passion for symmetrical system which has played so great and also ao mischievous a part in the history of the human mind, they expand their notions into creeds and bodies of doctrine to be defended with all the fierceness of first discoveriei. . It is' certain, however, that if experiment in its highest scientific forms was needful to the building up of a Natural philosophy as solid as it is comprehensive, still more needful is experiment, assisted and guided by. the best and latest lights, to the building up of a Social philosophy which, in its turn, shall rear its pinnacles to in elevation aa high and from ft platform as immove»ble.\ . , ' j We will not say that hitherto statistics have been, as weW the eatliestphyMcal observations, capricious, irregulsir,' imperfect, and obscure. ' The exact contrary, of aftch *' .statement would be no more than the bare truth in ftj large number 6( instances — as, for example, in the {important field of vital statistics. But, regarded comprehensively, it is strictly true that we are only just beginning to comprehend the real nature, the proper limits, and the apeoific force of the labours of the philosophical .statute , { In a sense' very large and absolute, he is merely the intelligent ally cf the cultivators' of branches of knowledge.. Jn^themselvea complete. He can inform the student of Jurisprudence how many suitors have resorted to ft particular court, or availed themselves of «, particular statute; but it is beyond his province to diiQUH the origin or authority of the tribunal, or the p]olicy,or,proTiaion«l«f;thQ enaotraent, 1 > Statistics in ljke/mannerare the allies of medicine, of police administratora, of sanitary authoritiea,, and of a large class of kindred branchea of inquiry! In these cases the office o|f the atatiatician ia auborainate to the office of him who cultivMea the larger acience from which ia derived the principles and acope of the inquiry. The juriat ihust classify his crime* and oivil causes in accordance with enlightened, rule* iof Jogic and equity, and the statist can dd noW>ra than fill up* tho aohedules prescribed by thia higher and special knowledge. But dven' here 'there ia a limitation not to be overlooked. A cultivator' of- > merely 'abMtroot studies is generally the worst and moat incompetent 'observer of the praotical operation even of those principles of whioh he understands the moat } and it ia here that the statist steps forward-_and r tella H him,that unless his methods of observation be adjusted" "with a nioe regard- to -the actual

exigencies of the case— unless they avoid the trivial and set forth the vital bearings of the .question — ho must still submit to be deprived of all real aid from positive observation*. There is, therefore, wlthuT all the larger social sciences an inner, and' smaller science ' which takes charge of the duty of vending or confuting by facts, collected, classified) and reduced into simple general results, the larger doctrine -which arise from the a prioi », discussion of .principles. But beyond this auxiliary position,, the statist has a department entirely his own. Throughout all civilised societies, as throughout all physical nature, there is & seiies of positive units which represent the numerical force or expression of every class of the phenomena to be_ dealt with. The mean temperature, for example, of this island ia expressed by a given figure, — and so is the mean duration of human life. " In like manner wo may arrive at units more or less trußtwoifchy as regards the mean annual number of crimes in this island of a given class,— J^juidents of a given kind,— of the average amouoj^Hgftges in a given trade, — of the average annua^HPnt of exports per head of population, — and so onithrough a long catalogue. If a series of units of this character could be determined rigidly for each civilised State, we should have before us* a chart of the social economy of the world almost as 'complete as the charts we air ady possess of its physical geography. But between our present imperfect knowledge and the attainment of such an end, there stretches, now, a wide and untamed wilderness. But that wilderness will be traversed, and it will be traversed by a steady perseverance in the path of vigorous statistical inquiry which has marked the last ten years. Students in aU countries are now agreed that the first step must be some method of uniform observation, and they are portly agreed as regard the principles of that uniformity. By-and-by will arise clearer notions of method, exacter views of the scope and aim of the objects to be pursued, and precise canons as regaids the composition and force of- aveiages, and numerical modes of statement. We shall advance fiom the less to the greater, — from the circumference towards the centre ; and the generation which witnesses the termination of the task, will not be backward to reckon the completed labour among the noblest inheritances won by the patient sagacity of the human mind.