salt water at its temperature of congelation is denser than at any higher temperature, its weight would cause it to sink; and it would in time, did no other cause intervene, occupy the whole of the space in the ocean not influenced by the sun's heat. But in considering the effect of the heat imparted to the surfaces, we have also to consider the effect of evaporation and precipitation. In the equatorial regions evaporation is rapid, so that the surface-film would become cleared through increased salinity were it not for the increased temperature and large precipitation, as well as to its being transported by the friction of the trade-winds and earth's motion to the westward. This surface-film, constantly moving westward in the equatorial regions, meets in the Atlantic with an obstructing point of the SouthAmerican continent, which directs it to the northward, so that the greater part of the water directly heated by the sun's rays in the tropical regions is forced into the North Atlantic. As the salinity of this water is greater than that of the subjacent layers, and its increased temperature only renders it less dense, directly a portion falls in temperature in the colder regions of the temperate zone, the surfacefilm sinks and imparts heat to the water beneath. Consequently the isotherms will be found at greater depths where the heated surface-films are constantly descending than when, owing to their being less dense than the subjacent layers, they remain on the surface.

ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS.

Address by Sir GEORGE CAMPBELL, K.C.S.I., M.P., D.C.L., President of the Economic Section.

I FEEL a difficulty in undertaking the Presidency of this special and important Department of the British Association, in this great city, which contains so many men masters of so many branches of economic subjects. But, Scotchman as I am, I have felt that I could not decline the honour proposed to me in the commercial capital of my own country; and I remember with pride that perhaps in no place in the British Empire could economic subjects be discussed with so great advantage. Other places have special industries. Glasgow has many, and she excels in them all.

I understand it to be the object of the Association that in the treatment of the subjects presented to us we should study, in this as in other departments, to follow as far as may be a strictly scientific method of inquiry, not lapsing into the discussion of political details, but attempting to ascertain the principles on which economic results are founded, and to define the main lines of economic truth. It may not always be possible to draw the boundary between science and practice; but I am sure that we shall all try as much as possible to avoid matters which involve party or personal questions, and to maintain a calm and scientific attitude in our treatment of the many subjects which come within the range of this Section.

The Section was originally called that of "Statistics;" and all economic inquiry must be based on or tested by Statistics. At first sight Statistics expressed in figures might seem to constitute the most exact of sciences; but in practice it is far otherwise. In nothing is so great caution necessary; there is too great temptation to reduce to figures facts which are themselves not sufficiently ascertained; too often an exactness is claimed for these figured results which is altogether fallacious and misleading. In fact there is a use and an abuse of figures; and one is sometimes tempted to sympathize with the cynical philosopher who said that nothing is more misleading than facts, except figures. It is especially necessary to distinguish between figures which are really ascertained, and those which are merely drawn by deductions from rough and conjectural facts. A false appearance of exactness

TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS.

should not be given to these latter. For instance, if we take the geographical area of a country to be so much, and assume the density of population to be at a certain rate per square mile, we may work out a very precise figure, and yet in reality the result is not at all precise.

There is very often fear that Statistics are sought out and adapted to suit a preconceived theory. Another misuse of Statistics is this, that when they are used to test certain capacities and qualifications work is directed and shaped to meet the statistical test, and the results thus obtained become misleading. In such a case it is necessary very frequently to change the form in which the statistical test is applied.

Bearing in mind, however, the necessity of guarding against abuse, there can be little doubt that statistical science is one of the most important instruments and necessities of our time, especially in this country, in which we are somewhat deficient in that science. First, we require statistics for the direct ascertainment Agricultural of facts for practical use; for instance, the statistics of production. and manufacturing statistics are of the greatest practical importance to the farmer and the manufacturer. We are almost wholly destitute of agricultural statistics. How great is the contrast in America and other countries, where great attention is paid to these subjects, and every farmer in the country is kept informed of very much that it is most important for him to know!

But there is a second and almost more important use of Statistics, viz. the cultivation of economic science by the inductive method. It is by collecting, verifying, and classifying facts that we are able to approach economic truth. There was a time when it seems to have been supposed that political economy was a science regulated by natural laws so fixed that safe results could be attained by deductive reasoning. But since it has become apparent that men do not in fact invariably follow the laws of money-making pure and simple, that economic action is affected by moral causes which cannot be exactly measured, it becomes more and more evident that we cannot safely trust to a chain of deduction, we must test every step by an accurate observation of facts, and induction from them. This is, it seems to me, the highest function of statistical science: we recognize that men are not mere machines whose course may be set and whose progress may be calculated by a simple formula. Men are complicated beings, whose minds and motives of action we do not yet thoroughly understand; we cannot foretell what they will do till we are sure that we know what in fact they actually have done In proportion as we attain that and do in a great variety of circumstances. knowledge, we become acquainted with the main agent in economic science, and make advances towards a knowledge of that science.

our own age.

When we seek to understand economic history and economic institutions, it is We seek to recover seldom that all the necessary materials are ready to hand in our own country and We must search for them far and wide. economic history, generally very imperfectly recorded in times when the science was little understood. And at the same time there is a kind of contemporaneous history of which very much use may be made. We may observe facts, and may obtain statistics in countries which are in stages of human and economic history As the history of plants and animals is recovered very different from our own. from geological records, so we may recover much of human history by studying man in the early, middle, and more advanced stages of civilization. We of this country, who rule over so many lands in so many parts of the world, have special opportunities for this kind of economic study. In my own experience I have been particularly struck by the light thrown on our institutions by a comparison with those lately and now existing among the different peoples of India. India is in truth a country of many peoples, and there is there infinite material for the human archæologist who would study the earlier phases of human history among the primitive aboriginal tribes, still in what I would call the earlier stages of existence. We may there learn much of the origin of the institutions which we have long come to look on as almost part of our nature-of the earlier forms of property and marriage, and many other things. The fortunate connexion with India of that great scholar, Sir Henry Maine, has led to a great amount of light At present I would only on the connexion between the East and the West.

allude to one or two points in what I call the middle history of man, directly leading to our modern institutions, in respect of which I think that much may be learned from observation in India. And in India we are not now left to mere individual observation only. A very substantial commencement has been made towards the introduction of statistical science and the collection of statistics of tolerable value, in that country. For some years past great attention has been paid to this subject by the Government. I may venture to say that I myself, when I held office in that country, have done all that was in my power to promote statistical knowledge; and a number of earnest men have done the like. As usual in the commencement of such inquiries, our difficulty has not so much been to get figures as to keep our statistical figures down to those which are pretty reliable. We are thoroughly aware of the necessity of caution in this respect; and we believe that we are gradually coming to the point when we can say that we have some very valuable statistics on a very large scale.

Of the history and use of local Institutions we may learn very much in India. That country was, locally speaking, one of the most self-governed countries in the world, in native times. In all parts of this island, while the civic constitutions of the ancient Burghs have been preserved, the self-governing institutions of the country at large have almost entirely disappeared, leaving only a few fossil remains to testify to their previous existence. On the continent of Europe the old Communes retain a good deal of vitality. But it is in India under native rule that we see these institutions in full vigour and working order. That little republic, the village community of India, has come to be looked on as an interesting old relic rather than as the subject for modern imitation. In my opinion we may draw from it a very large store of economic knowledge which may be very useful to us. 1 grieve to say that philistine and self-satisfied as we are, prone as we are to believe that there can be no good thing that is not our own, instead of supporting and cherishing the self-governing Indian Communes, and taking from them an example for our own country, we are permitting them to fall into decay. They owed in fact their cohesion and their durability to pressure from without, to the necessity of the case, which made self-government indispensable to their existence. Our strong arm has removed that external pressure; and in our self-confident spirit we have substituted our pretentious but imperfect and uncertain Courts for the rough but reliable village rule of former days. I believe that the more we introduce into India true economic science, the more it will be apparent that we have taken on ourselves too heavy a burden, that too great centralization is a mistake, and that, in a country where political freedom on a large scale is impossible, the only satisfactory resource is a large measure of the local government to which the people are accustomed.

The tenure of land is another subject on which great light is thrown by Indian experience. After an intimate acquaintance with the tenures which we there find in existence, and those which our system has created, we seem to have before us a picture of the rise and progress of property in land. Putting aside the older forms of property, we have had in India many examples of the feudal tenure of a conquered country by chiefs and subchiefs holding in subordination one to another and ruling over communities of cultivators, some of whom were free and possessed of certain rights and privileges, and others were in a servile position. Among the communities holding land we have manifest traces of the old system of partition and repartition; we have before our eyes the gradual disuse of that old system and the gradual growth of the individual tenure of the lands under the plough with common use of the pasture-lands, the wood, and the water, on a tenure strictly analogous to that of English Commons. We have the struggle between the Lords and the Commoners, and questions between the Commoners and the landless members of the community, just as we have had in this country. Then we have the growth of English ideas of property in land. We have the overlord, the Zemindar, no longer holding in fendal tenure and receiving customary dues and services, but turned by us into a rent-receiver. We have the struggle of the rent-receiver influenced by our ideas to turn the privileged cultivator into a tenant pure and simple, to appropriate the Commons and to establish absolute property. We have the emancipation of some cultivators as copyholders,

the subsidence of others put into rackrented tenants-at-will, and then into labourers. All these stages in the tenure of land we have in the Indian countries where the Zemindar system has prevailed. In other parts of India, where the Government has recognized the rights of and dealt with the Ryots direct, we have the rapid development of small property in land with all the incidents of that form of property with which in many parts of Europe we are familiar.

Then we have another process going on in all properties, small and great. At first the holders of the land are content to pay, as they always have paid to native rulers, the bulk of the rent to the State or to the feudal lord, retaining for themselves only certain dues and perquisites. Under our system the State rent is limited; a portion of it is surrendered to the landholders. From time to time, under the influence of English ideas, that portion left to the holder of the land is increased. In one great province the assessment rendered perpetual in the last century has become so light as to be rather a moderate land-tax than a rent. In other provinces a moderate assessment fixed for a very long period becomes a very light assessment before the end of that period; as the country progresses and values increase, the share of the landholder becomes larger every day; he learns to spend that share. When the time for revision of assessment comes he resists any very large or sudden increase; and the Government more and more yields to his demands. Thus gradually property in land in the English sense is established. Tenancy by capitalist farmers under capitalist landlords we have not yet come to in India.

The subject of small cultivation seems to derive a new interest in a new quarter from what is now taking place in regard to the emancipated Africans in the United States of America and elsewhere. I understand that the cultivation which has already made the produce of the American cotton-districts almost or quite equal to that before the war, is for the most the cultivation of small independent negro cultivators, who raise cotton on a system much the same as that under which the Ryots of India or Metayers of Italy cultivate small farms. There seems to be among the dark races of India and Africa a dislike to regular hired labour, and a preference for independent labour on their own account, which makes them prefer small farming to service, or at all events leads to their doing better work on their own farms. There has been, I think, a disposition to undervalue the agricultural skill of the Indian ryot. And if it should prove that in advanced America, under free institutions, the cultivation of an article of great value and high quality is best carried on by small black farmers, we may well believe that in other countries, too, great results may be obtained by the same system. The settling down to honest labour of the American freedmen is an example full of promise, I hope, for the African race throughout the world. If in all the countries where the state of black freedmen is still uncertain they can be thus settled, a great end will be achieved. And in Africa itself we may hope that in countries now torn by war and slavery a guiding hand may lead the African race to peaceful, prosperous, and happy times.

I merely instance these as cases in which economic problems may be studied in their several stages in countries other than our own. I cannot attempt to pursue these subjects at present.

Proceeding to another branch of economical science, I cannot but think that there has been passing before us of late a very great deal to bring home a view with which I have before on other occasions dealt-that curtly expressed in the homely saying of Walter Scott, that "it is saving rather than getting that is the mother of riches." What an extraordinary economic lesson is read to us in the results of the late French war! True, the French have been politically humbled; true, they have been obliged to pay a war indemnity of crushing magnitude. But what has followed? Misfortune has taught the French a lesson of economy and prudence; triumph taught the Germans a lesson of pride and extravagance. The French have retrieved their losses; they are at this moment commercially the most prosperous people in Europe; they bear without difficulty or distress a taxation far larger than that of any other country in the world; while the Germans, who launched out into extravagance on the strength of the vast sums paid them by the French, are suffering greatly from exhaustion and commercial collapse; their trade

is bad, their manufactures are discredited, their people are disheartened. The French are a people of small proprietors and small capitalists; they have not the great masses of accumulated wealth that we have in this country in the hands of great capitalists. But their wealth is more generally distributed among the people, and in their hands it fructifies at least as much in the end; if there are not such high profits, there are not such great spendings. Looking to their capacity of bearing taxation, to the general wellbeing of the people, to the very general possession of small property, it may well be a question whether, after all and in spite of wars and misfortunes, France is not quite as prosperous a country as our own, and quite as happy a country.

This at least is certain, that small people working for themselves, if they do not earn more, at least work more zealously and save more than those who work as the hired labourers of others. I am inclined to think that, treating the matter scientifically, the facts will justify us in reducing it to a law that the small man who works for himself is a thrifty man and saves, while the hired labourer is seldom so saving and prudent. Why is this? I think the explanation is to be found in the habit of forethought and management which is necessarily engendered in the man who, not living on daily wages, is bound in some degree to take thought for the morrow, to calculate his ways and means, to husband his resources for a rainy day, to make forecasts of the provision for himself and his family. To this I attribute it that the small French proprietor, the Irish farmer, the Indian ryot, the Scotch weaver (who is unhappily passing from us) are or were all saving, thrifty men. Where will you find a better class than the old Scotch handloom weaver, the careful, thoughtful, well-educated, independent man, the owner of his own cottage and patch of garden ground, generally prudent, and always ready to hold his own in argument? No doubt modern mechanics make more; but do they accumulate more? The habit of living upon weekly wages diminishes the necessity for forethought. The practice of migrating in search of the best market takes away the desire to own a house and garden. I think it cannot too often be repeated that the great economic question of the day is to reconcile the modern arrangement of capitalist and workmen with sufficient incentives to prudence and economy; that is the problem at the bottom of all plans of cooperation, and of most of the questions connected with Trades' Unions and the like.

Very intimately connected, too, with this question is the great and most difficult subject of pauperism. Poor Indian ryots manage to get on without Poor Laws because they are prudent self-workers. The poor Irish farmers for the most part do the same. In most European countries there are no poor laws. Yet when the people of a country are reduced to the position of labourers poor laws become a necessity. It is found in practice that people living on wages do not make the same provision for themselves and their helpless relations that self-workers do. There has been a strong disposition to meet this tendency by a more severe administration of the poor laws, by driving poor people into the workhouse. I confess that I doubt the efficacy of this system; at any rate I think it may be carried too far; and I was glad to hear Mr. Walter of the Times' make a manly stand against it in his place in the House of Commons.

It is for us to treat the matter scientifically, and to consider the principles on which poor-relief is founded. The Scotch are a logical people, and they are inclined to take the view that payments to the poor-rates are a kind of insurance. They pay rates when they are well-to-do, and they think they are well entitled to pensions from the rates when they are disabled. Is this view a correct one? or if not, what is the real principle of poor-rates and poor-relief? I think that these are questions which must be answered by those who would take a severe view of the relief system. I am inclined to doubt whether English doctrinaires or central boards can much improve on our careful and prudent system of out-door relief administered by local bodies who thoroughly know their own people.

Even if time permitted I would not venture to deal with great commercial questions in the presence of those who so much better understand them; but there is one question of pressing importance at the present time to which I must allude, the more as it is much connected with the country of which I have a large personal knowledge, India; I mean the silver question. He would be a bold man