The Sun.
London, England, 1861-08-15 00:00:00

THE SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION.

DUBLIN, WEDNESDAY.
Lord Brougham and the Duke of Wellington
arrived at Kingstown by the Telegraph steamer on
Monday night. They came to Dublin by train and
immediately drove to the Viceregal Lodge. The
Earl and Countess of Bessborough, Lady Caroline
and the Misses Lascelles, Viscount Amberley, and
the Lady Georgina Russell, are among the dis-
tinguished visitors at present staying with the Lord-
Lieutenant. Yesterday morning Lord Brougham
drove into town early, and visited the Lord Mayor
at the Mansion-house. He next proceeded to the
Bank of Ireland, of the architectural beauty of
which he expressed his admiration. He inspected
carefully the several departments of the Bank. He
remained a considerable time in the chamber once

occupied by the House of Peers, which is still kept
for show to remind the visitor that the building

Was once the Parliament House. He then passed

over the way to Trinity College, where he was re-
ceived by several distinguished Fellows of the Uni-
versity, who accompanied him through the library,
museum, the examination hall, and the new building.
He subsequently went to the Royal Irish Academy,
Dawson-street, which had been placed at the service
of the Social Science Congress for offices during the
meetings. His lordship having been conducted
through the building by the secretary of the insti-
tution, returned to the Viceregal Lodge. This
evening he delivered his inaugural address as Pre-
sident of the Association for Promoting Social
Science. It was as follows :—ln opening the fifth
congress of the National Association I hardly need
'observe that it would ill deserve its name if it did
not embrace the important part of the empire in
which we have now the happiness to assemble. We
are in the great capital of Ireland, renowned for
having given to the world men illustrious in all
the departments of science and art, as well as of
arms. But it is to me individually a painful reflec-
tion that the most eminent of these, and whose
friendship was my comfort and my honour, I cannot
meet in this my first visit to the country adorne
by their transcendant genius—Grattan, Plunkett,d
Wellington, Wellesley—the great patriot, the con-
summate orator, the first of warriors, foremost too
among statesmen, and the illustrious head of his
house, the greatest of all who ever ruled over Ire-
land—all of these I have been doomed to outlive,
and to the dispensations of Providence it is fit we
should be resigned. But the loss of such men to
their country is grievous, and more especially of
one whom I have named. The others had accom-
plished the high work to which they were severally
called and left their bright example to guide us, and
their success to cheer; but of the great Duke,
whether in peace or in war, whether we look abroad
or at home while we cherish the immortal memory,
we feel the loss not to be repaired. It now becomes
my duty to note the progress which social science
has made daring the last year, and its present
state and prospects. We are met again by the
complaint that few of the plans proposed by us have
been accomplished, and that, of the measures ori-
ginating in our labours, many have failed to pass
through the Legislature. But the progress of all
the sciences and arts is slow, because their improve-
ment is necessarily gradual. Our limited faculties
can never reach at once the utmost excellence of
which they are capable, and their exercise can never

complete suddenly any great work, but must pro-
ceed by steps towards its accomplishment. In the
whole circle of science you find gradual progress to
be the rule. Thus the vast changes which Newton
made in the mathematics and in physical science
were effected after others had made a near approach
to the same point. The calculus, in itself so great
an extension of analytical science, and in its conse-
quences producing such a revolution in all the ex-
acter sciences, had, above a quarter of a century
before its invention, been nearly discovered by
Cavalleri and Roberval, and still more nearly by
Fermat, and some years later most nearly of all by
Barrow ; while the doctrine of gravitation and its
explanation of the heavenly motions had been ap-
proached—at any rate, had the way prepared for it
—by Galileo, Kepler, linyghens, Borelli ; and even
his optical .discoveries had been partially anticipated
by Krontaud, of Prague, and Antonio, Bishop of
Spelatro. The science of chemistry, from the dreams
of the alchymists to the erroneous theory of Stahl,
made slow progress, and by successive improvements
was freed from those errors, and grew into the
science which Black, Priestly, Lavoisier, and Davy
brought to its present state. The great rule of gra-
dual progress governs the moral sciences as well as
the natural. Before the foundations of political eco-
nomy were laid by Hume and Smith, the French
economists had made a great step towards it, and
Turgot had himself worked, and as a Minister
had patronised the labours of others in the same
direction. Again, in constitutional policy, see by
what slow degrees the great discovery of represen-
tative government has been made from its first rude
elements—the attendance of feudal tenants at their
lord's court, and the summons of burghers to grant
supplies of money. Far from being impatient at this
slow progress, we ought rather to reflect that the
sure advance of all the sciences depends in a great
measure upon its being, gradual. But the common
law of our nature, which forbids the sudden and
rapid leaping forward, and decrees that each suc-
cessive step prepared by the last facilitates the next,
is in an especial manner of importance and of value
in the social sciences, which so nearly affect the
highest interests of mankind. Here our course, to
be safe, must be guided by the result of experience,
and must always be of a tentative kind. We must
even be prepared to change our direction and our
pace, and to retrace our steps when we find we have
gone too far in a wrong direction. The skilful
navigator, when steering on an unknown coast,
after taking all precautions to obtain information
respecting it, having no chart, or none that can be
relied on, proceeds with the lead ever in his hand,
and the glass at his eye, lies to, when he can, at
night or in a fog, and has his sail and his helm
always ready to change his course on the least indi-
cation of peril. The safety of his ship and crew
depends on such precautions, and the safety of the
community depends upon all proposed improve-
ments, which are changes, being first most maturely
considered, and, when adopted, being carried into
execution by such advances as shall give time for
correcting errors, or stopping short, or altering the
course pursued, when actual experience proves it to
be wrong. Take an example from the great change
in our jurisprudence which I had the satisfaction of
bringiog about in 1851, by the act for the examina-
tion of parties in all civil suits. Above 20 years
before I had strongly urged the change of the
law of evidence in this and other respects. 'Various
improvements had been effected rather by judicial
decision than by state—by what Mr. Bentham used
to call " judge-made law." Then, in 1843, Lord
Denman carried a bill for removing the objection
of interest to a witness's competency which I had
in vain proposed fifteen years before. In 1842 the
proposal was renewed that all objection of interest
being proposed to be removed, the parties should
themselves be made competent. But the bill passed,
confined to witnesses not being made parties. It
was foretold by the objectors that perjury would be
increased. The Act passed, and there was no in-
crease of perjury. I then brought in the bill for
the examination of parties, and it passed without
much opposition, though the Chancellor of the day
resisted it, and had it referred to a select committee.
But I never should have carried it had not the first
step been taken by the bill of 1843, and the expe-
rience under that Act shown how safely we might
trferther. The Law Ame.adment Society, the pre-
exatZnand the ally of our National Association,
Courts e
Ad minutely the working of the County
tin the examination'. of parties. It circu-
lated clueri
their to all the judges of those courts, and
I had thus answersoPrroved wholly favourable to the plan.
for the bill tho powerful support of
actual experience for several years ; and I now have
hopes of being able complete the great change by
a further step, extending i
it
to tao criminalt cases, at least
so far as giving the de
s an option of being
examined if he pleases, ,na
of course submitting
himself to the sifting of cross-examination. I con-
ceive that the history of th) Peat improvement in
our jurisprudence throws a strong light upon the
position that changes in meal urea of social improve-
ment generally are best effect( 41by degrees, and that