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.