The Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1860-07-18 00:00:00

THE INTERNATIONAL STATISTICAL

CONGRESS.

The fourth session of this congress was inaugurated
on Monday afternoon by his Royal Highness the Prince
Consort, at Somerset-house, under the most auspicious
circumstances. The attendance was most influential and
brilliant, and amongst those present were the Right
Hon. T. Milner Gibson, M.P., the President of the
Board of Trade ; the Right Hon. W. F. Cowper, M.P.,
Lord John Russell, M.P., Lord Brougham, the Earl of
Shaftesbury, Earl Stanhope, Viscount Ebrington, Lord
Monteagle, Right Hon. E. P. Bouverie, M.P., Lord H
Vane, M.P., Mr. Dallas; the American Minister, Mr.
Slaney, M.P., Mr. Alderman Salomons, M.P., Mr. R.
Monckton Milnes, M.P., Mr. Thomas Chambers, Q.C.,
the Common Serjeant, Dr. William Farr, Dr. W. A.
Guy, the Rev. Dr. Jell, Sir Roderick I. Murchison,
Major Graham, Mr. A. Bonham-Carter, &c. The fol-
lowing is a list of the delegates present from foreign
countries :—Austria—His Excellency Baron Czcernig;
Bavaria--Dr. F. B. W. Hermann ; Belgium—M. A.
Quetelet, M. A. Visscher ; Brazil—His Excellency
Senhor de Carvalho Moreira ; Denmark—Dr. C. N.
David; France—M. A. Legoyt ; Hamburgh, Lubeck,
and Bremen—C. W. Asher, LL.D. ; Hanover—Profes-
sor Wappaus ; Holland—Dr. M. M. de Baumhauer and
Dr. T. Ackersdyck ; Mecklenburgh-Schwerin—Baron
Maltzalen ; Norway—Professor Q. K. Daa ; Prussia—
Dr. E. Engel and Dr. F. G. Schubert; Russia—Dr. T
B. Wernadski and M. de Bouschen ; Saxe-Cobourg and
Saxe-Meiningen—M. G. Hopf ; Spain—Count de Ri-
palda ; Sweden—Dr. F. H. Berg ; Switzerland--M.
Vogt and M. Kolb ; Turkey—Agassi Effendi ; United
States—Judge Longstreet and Dr. Jarvis. The delegates
for British colonies and other countries connected with
Great Britain : —Australia : New South Wales—James
M'Arthur, Esq., Edward Hamilton, Esq., and Stuart A.
Donaldson, Esq. ; Queensland—M. Marsh, Esq., M.P. ;
Victoria—W. Westgarth, Esq.; South Australia—E.
Stephen, Esq. ; Tasmania—J. A. Youl, Esq. ; and New
Zealand—J. E. Fitzgerald, Esq. ; British Guiana—W.
Walker, Esq., Colonial Secretary ; Canada—J. T. Galt,
Esq., Finance Minister ; Cape of Good Hope—W. Field,
Esq. ; Ceylon—Sir Charles M'Carthy ; Jamaica and
Barbadoes—Stephen Cave, Esq., M.P. ; Mauritius—G.
Fropier, Esq. ; and the lonian Islands—H. Drummond
Wolff, Esq., C.M.C.G., Civil Secretary.
The Right Hon. the President of the Board of Trade
presided over a preliminary meeting, at which the
officers of the Congress were appointed, and the regula-
tions for the general meeting and the sections adopted.
His Royal Highness the Prince Consort arrived at
four o'clock, when he was received at the grand entrance
by the leading members of the organisation commission,
and a company of the Westminster (Queen's Own) Rifle
Volunteers formed a guard of honour. His Royal High-
ness on entering was loudly cheered, and the band of
the Rifts played the National Anthem.
The Prince Consort, having taken the presidential
chair, delivered the following inaugural address, which
was frequently applauded :
His Royal Highness addressed the meeting as follows :
—Gentlemen,--The Statistical Congress of all Nations
has been invited by the government to hold its fifth
meeting in this metropolis, in conformity to 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
organisation. 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 juilgiueut with regard to
them on the collective result of the thoughts aid 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 (distracter, addres-
sing 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 statis-
tical 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 ((liquid lend its powerful aid.
Gentlemen, this explains, and must serve as an apology
for my presuming to hold thu post of your president, for
which I otherwise feel full well my unworthiness. When,
however, the commissioners for the organisation of the
congress expressed to me their desire that jC should do
so, r felt it incumbent upon rue 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 the
Queen, and testifying to the foreign delegates the esteem
in which she holds them personally, and her apprecia-
tion of the science which they serve. Let them now wel-
come 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 Qreat Rxbibitice of 4851; it 4 here
that the 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 it acknowledged position among the
other sciences, and still subject to many vulgar preju-
dices. It is little understood, for it is dry and unpa-
latable to the general public in its simple arithmeticql
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 hds been little understood,
also, front the peculiar and often unilistifiable 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 scru-
tiny, and tempt him to draw largely upon so convenient
and available a capital. The public generally connect,
therefore, in their minds statistics, if not with unwelconie
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 assu-
rance in support of the most opposite arguments. A
great and distinguished French minister and statesman
is even quoted as baying 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
trbioh may have suggeoteri to hint this art obould hare
tempted him or others, as historians, to group facts
also, it would be no' more' reasonable to male the his-
torical 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, physi-
cians, and naturalists should seek to support their state-
ments 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 scheme in the general esteem of the public.
Statistical science is, as I have said, comparatively new
in its position among the scipws in gene,tal, 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 discovery 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 slinpliciti, 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 Nye recognise one
of the highest treasures of man on earth, are loft
unestpressedt though rendered self-ap,parcut, qs they
may be rend, 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 pre-arranged scheme,
the parts of wl.l.in are capable of mathematical measure-,
meat, and the scheme itself of numerical expresi9n
• •
that it leads to fatelism, and, the_rdot:ei ete'pr.7,:es man of
his dignity, of his virtue and morality, as it would prove
him to be a mere wheel in this machine, ityedx\hle of
exercising a free choice of action, but Keclestined to fulfil
a given task and to tun a prescribed course? wheihu

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 dimi-
nished by the discovery of the fact that the earth requires
365, 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 degrees according to Fahrenheit,
that the nightingale sings only in April and May, that
all birds lay eggs, that 106 boys are born to every 100
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 amuse-
ment 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 esta-
blished the theory that in the natural world there exists
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, while 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 his life ; and yet this
does not imply an impious pretension to determine
when this 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 case, 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 inappli-
cable to any special case; that, therefore, what is proved
to be laws in general is uncertain in particular. Herein
lies the refutation also of the first objection, and thus
it is the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Creator
manifested, showing how the Almighty has estab-
lished the physical and moral world on unchange-
able 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 un-
affected 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. Quete-
let, and from whom I had the privilege, now 24 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 accumula-
tion and reduction of statistical facts. It is the social
condition of mankind, as exhibited by those facts, which
form 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 develop-
ment and happiness. The importance of these inter-
national congresses in this respect cannot be overrated.
They not only awaken public attention to the value of
these pursalts, bring together men ,of all ponntries who
devote their lives tQ them, and who are thus enabled to
exchange their thoughts and varied' experiences ; but
they pave the way to an agreement among different
governments and nations to follow up these common
enquiries, 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 col-
lection 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,
ef the products of sgriegituras & Maaufsaure,
of the results of trade, commerce, and finance. Nur, 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 occu-
pation, races, and climates. And even this comparison
of the same facts in different localities does not give us
all the necessary materials from which to draw our con-
clusions ; 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 persons coming
under his observation, old and young, male and female, and
at all seasons, arrives at the average number of the 'pulsa-
tions of the heart in man's normal condition ; by feeling
the pulse of the same.person under the most varied circum-
stances and conditions, he arrives at a conclusion on
this person's pulse. Again, by feeling the pulse of the
greatest variety of persons suffering from the same dis-
ease, ascertains the general cOndiiion of the pulse
under the influence of that disease ; it is row only that,
feeling a particular patient's pulse, he will be able to

. .
judge whether this person is afflicted 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 possi-
bility of undertaking them at all, on the similarity, nay,
congruity of the method employed, and the expressions,
figures, and conicitions selected under which the observa-
tions have been taken. noes, 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 especial 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 various meetings
succeeded in doing a great deal in this cl4ectiOn; the
official statistics of ail Countries have been improved, and
in *rii4rd 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 dimi-
nishing its value for general purposes. The judicial
statistics of England and Wales do not show a com-
plete comparative view of the operation of our judicial
establishments ; nor, while we are io all the depart-
ments of the state most actively engaged in the prepa-
ration 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 recom-
mended 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 com-
mission 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. One of the mast useful results of the
labogs of the congress has been the common agreement
of al states to . inquire into the causes of every death,
and to return the deaths from the same causes under
synonymous names, sanctioned by the congress. It has in
this instance set the example of establishing what is
most desirable in all other branchs of statistics—namely,
the agreement upon well-defined terms. There ought
to .gist no greater difficulty in arriving at such an •
agreement in the case of the various crimes that in that
of "causes of death:" and it must be remembered that
it is one of the first tasks and duties of every science to
start with a definition of terms. What is it that is meant •
by r honse, a family, an adult, an educated or an'unedu-
catel person ; by murder, manslaughter, and sot on? It
is e'ident that as long as a different sense is. attached to
the terms in different returns their use for comparison
is s.'i, and for simple, study. very much deteriorated ; and
still' we have not yet arrived at snch a, simple and
Obvious desideratum !. The different weights, measures,
and currencies in vitiCli different statistics are expressed
cause Indite; difficulties and impediments. Sug-
gestions with regard to the removal of these have been
mace at former meetings, and will no doubt be renewed.
We tancy here that our pound, as the largest available
unit, with its florin, offers great advantages, particu-
lady if further subdivided decimally. We li,,pe to lay
before you, as far as Great Britain, is concerned, the
Registrar-General's analys:.,s, of, the causes or 4ath, and
the clingers that people -lieottutpl tifeaCh period of life ;
-or- n'eW returns of tie D'" oduce-o( our mines ; tbe. acri-
cultulAl rtt''''ns of Ireland, in which, the Regi,strac-
uencral of that eountrylhas giv,eueXCl;Y, y.ear ;10,9 ligisew
of lid 1•141IeT VqY IFAcI 9s, cx9,v, \(W xis A-1*
...,u
149ikkees as w.el‘ as 44 YAilit. s" • •
•
in, alitaini Shay
na ~tiniate of its
~,u has proved by his success
~e facts at a comparatively moderate ex-
. ---;
penseand by the voluntary assistance of the landowners and