where new efforts were made to stop their further advance. In October, however, they were enabled to start once more for Tsemas, the first stage in China, that country to which they had so long looked forward as the Promised Land. The Mekong was here finally quitted. The Expedition had to deviate eastward, and came upon the Yuen Kiang, or River of Tonking. Garnier explored this river as far as the Anamite frontier, and rejoined his party at Linggan. From Linngan-fu the Expedition proceeded direct towards Yunnan-fu, traversing a lake-region of great interest. On quitting the valley of the Tonking river they commenced ascending a plateau of 5000 to 5600 feet in height, on which they found growing most of the fruits and other vegetable products of Europe. They arrived at Yunnan-fu on the 23rd of December, 1867. Thence they set off by a devious course (the country between being ravaged by hostile armies) for Tali; but Capt. De la Grée falling sick, the leadership of the expedition was given to Lieut. Garnier, Dr. Joubert being left in charge of the chief. Through a difficult country, by the aid of some missionaries, the party at length reached Tali, but were soon compelled to leave again owing to the Sultan's unfriendliness. By consummate generalship and great presence of mind Lieut. Garnier conducted his party once more across the frontier, where rumours of the death of their chief reached them, causing them intense anxiety. At length a letter from Dr. Joubert confirmed the rumours, and plunged them all into the deepest distress. Finally, in May 1868, they embarked on the great Kiang at Sin-chan-fu, and reached Hankau in the beginning of June, just two years from their departure from Saigon. Here they found once more countrymen of their own, a European settlement, and means of transport to carry them back to their native land. The whole distance over which they travelled between Cratieh, at the head of the Mekong Delta, and Sinchan on the Upper Yangtsé, amounted to 2460 miles, of which about 1650 were performed on foot. To this must be added about 2000 more in excursions and digressions by separate members of the Expedition; and they have surveyed an extent of actual itinerary of over 4000 miles in all, besides an immense number of astronomical determinations.

ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS.

Address by LORD NEAVES, one of the Lords of Session, President of the Section.

In

A DISTINGUISHED predecessor in the occupancy of this chair commenced its business by declaring it to have been the custom that the proceedings of the Section should be opened by an address, and that that address should be a brief one. complying with the first of these rules, I shall endeavour, if I can, not to forget the second; but the subjects falling within the jurisdiction of the Section are extensive, and compression is always difficult, particularly to one who like myself am rather a novice in the matters of which I am to treat.

Economic science is sometimes spoken of as having a very modern date; but I think that this is an error. More or less the subject has entered into all the codes or systems of law that have been established from the earliest times. Alongside of political philosophy, which may be considered as peculiarly the science of Government, great attention has always been bestowed upon matters which form an important part of political economy, or economic science-such as taxation, trade, commerce, wealth, and population. Those writers also who have presented us with ideal or imaginary States, or Utopias, are full of discussions and speculations of the same kind. The rival Republics' of Plato and Aristotle afford abundant illustrations of this statement. It is peculiarly interesting to see this fact brought out so vividly in the admirable introduction to the Republic' of Plato, prefixed to that treatise in Professor Jowett's translation of that great philosopher; and if we had a similar translation and exposition of Aristotle's kindred work, which I think we might have from the hand of one of our own Vice-presidents, to whom

we owe so excellent an exposition of the "Ethics," we should see in a remarkable manner how many of the most interesting questions of the present day were considered and dealt with by those two wonderful men according to the varying lights and tendencies which characterized their several minds. It is true that in more recent times a great advance has been made in economic science, and one feature and excellency of that change is the tendency to leave things as much as possible to their spontaneous operation, and to the inherent laws of nature and society; though here again there has latterly been a reaction. It is to the credit of Scotland that she has produced the two greatest leaders in this modern movement-David Hume and Adam Smith-who are still high authorities on the whole subject, and whose principles have been made the basis of much of our recent legislation. The subject of Statistics is added to the title of this Section as an auxiliary to the main subject of economic science.

Statistics and their Fallacies.

The study of statistics, though not entirely of modern origin, has assumed a special prominence in recent times. Statistics are certainly more of the nature of a means than an end, and their great use and object I take to be to establish, by showing the proportions or averages of results as they actually occur, the existence of certain natural laws possessing the character of absolute or general uniformity. But statistics are liable to hazards, which it is most important to attend to and guard against. It is a common jest that there is nothing so fallacious as figures, except facts; and, as generally happens, this jocular reproach has enough of partial truth in it to preserve it in vitality. Two qualities of mind are employed in statistics of very different kinds-namely, accuracy in observing and recording facts, and wisdom in deducing inferences from them. These two different faculties must act in harmony together; and if they do not do so, fallacious conclusions will inevitably be the result. Let me give some easy and familiar instances of the fallacies that may thus be caused.

In the course of my duties as a judge of the Supreme Criminal Court, I have occasion from time to time to find at circuit towns very light or even altogether empty calendars; and when there is no case to try at all, this is naturally a matter of rejoicing for all concerned, of which the judge has the double benefit in having nothing to do, and in carrying off a pair of white gloves. Latterly, however, I have been led in such cases to make the remark to the local authorities, that a light calendar was not an unequivocal sign of a satisfactory state of things in a district, for that result might arise in two ways-either from no crime being committed in the locality, which is a just subject of congratulation, or from few or no crimes being detected and brought to justice, though many may have been committed, which is a very deplorable condition of affairs. This consideration, I am glad to say, was not called forth by any thing in the state of our criminal police in Scotland, but was suggested and illustrated by the condition of matters in another part of the United Kingdom, where there was no want of crime, but it often led to no prosecutions, from the inability of the law to lay hold of the perpetrators, or to find evidence to prove their guilt. Nay, a deeper fallacy may sometimes lurk under judicial statistics of this kind. It has been said, I fear with truth, that in certain parts of the kingdom the very absence of some delinquencies of a special description is the result of a complete subversion of legal authority. Agrarian crimes are perpetrated there in order to punish or deter those who exercise their legal rights as to land; and when this system of terrorism is complete, the crimes cease to be committed, because the evil organization has attained its object, and does not need to be practically exercised, as no one dares to disobey its lawless mandates. The reign of terror is thus established by paralyzing the exercise of any freedom of action which might incur its penal denunciations. A worse state of society than this can scarcely be imagined, where lawlessness is enthroned and wholly supersedes the law.

Another example of fallacious inference from judicial statistics may be derived from the history of our penal legislation. Until the middle or latter half of last century, the proprietary feelings of the country, and specially, perhaps, of the urban trading classes, incited Parliament to pass severe laws for their protection, which

often affixed to slight violations of property a capital punishment. The number not only of robberies but of thefts, which were then capitally punishable, is almost incredible to us of the present generation; and can now excite only our horror and amazement. I would refer you here to an admirable paper on this subject by Johnson, being No. 114 of the Rambler,' which gives an account of the feelings that then prevailed and the system that was followed. The paper, which is most powerfully written, deserves peculiar praise, as being the commencement of those humane and wise efforts for the amelioration of the penal law that were afterwards renewed and brought to a successful issue by the perseverance of Romilly and the practical sagacity of Peel. Dr. Johnson says:- "It has always been the practice, when any particular species of robbery becomes prevalent and common, to endeavour its suppression by capital denunciation. Thus one generation of malefactors is commonly cut off, and their successors are frightened into new expedients. The art of thieving is augmented with greater variety of fraud, and subtlised to higher degrees of dexterity and more occult methods of conveyance. The law then renews the pursuit in the heat of anger, and overtakes the offender again with death. By this practice, capital inflictions are multiplied, and crimes, very different in their degrees of enormity, are equally subjected to the severest punishment that man has the power of exercising upon man.'

Now, in this state of things, there is little doubt that after every new application of capital punishment to a crime that did not previously infer it, there might be a diminution of prosecutions on that head, and the public were thus, perhaps, led to think that theft and rapine had in this way received a check. But experience and reflection soon suggested another explanation, which is thus pointed out in the paper I refer to:-"All laws against wickedness are ineffectual unless some will inform and some will prosecute; but till we mitigate the penalties for mere violations of property, information will always be hated and prosecution dreaded. The heart of a good man cannot but recoil at the thought of punishing a slight injury with death, especially when he remembers that the thief might have procured safety by another crime from which he was restrained only by his remaining virtue." In connexion with this last consideration, Dr. Johnson had previously urged that the terror of death "should be reserved as the last resort of authority, as the strongest and most operative of prohibitory sanctions, and placed before the treasure of life to guard from invasion what cannot be restored. To equal robbery with murder, is to reduce murder to robbery, to confound in common minds the gradations of iniquity, and incite the commission of a greater crime to prevent the detection of a less. If only murder were punished by death, very few robbers would stain their hands with blood; but when by the last act of cruelty no new danger is incurred, and greater security may be obtained, upon what principle shall we bid them forbear?" This remarkable paper, written, be it observed, in the year 1751, concludes with the following characteristic sentences:- "This scheme of invigorating the laws by relaxation, and extirpating wickedness by lenity, is so remote from common practice, that I might reasonably fear to expose it to the public, could it be supported only by my own observations. I shall therefore, by ascribing it to the author, Sir Thomas More, endeavour to procure it that attention which I wish always paid to prudence, to justice, and to mercy." We may thus see how mere numerical statistics in such questions may speak an ambiguous language, and that the paucity of prosecutions may be a proof, not of the wisdom, but of the inefficacy of our legislation; for while it is doubtful how far criminals, or at least habitual criminals, are deterred by capital punishment, which they come to look upon as the fortune of war, there is no doubt that undue severity disinclines injured parties from taking steps to bring down on the delinquent what is considered as an exorbitant penalty. I may here, perhaps, suggest a question whether our country of Scotland was not saved from such evils partly by the institution of a public prosecutor, and partly by the anomalous, but convenient power which he possessed of restricting the pains of law, when they were capital, to an arbitrary punishmenta resource which was likely to render juries less unwilling to convict than they might otherwise have been. I should mention that a protest against the severity of the penal laws as to property was uttered by an earlier opponent of the system, though one not so disinterested as Dr. Johnson: I mean the widow of the freebooter 1871.

13

Gilderoy, or whoever it was that wrote the Lament bearing that name. The verse I refer to runs thus, and is expressed in very good "braid Scots" and very fair

metre:

Wae worth the loons that made the laws

To hang a man for gear:

To reave of life for sic a cause

As stealing horse or mear!

Had not their laws been made sae strick

I ne'er had lost my joy;

Wi' sorrow ne'er had wat my cheek
For my dear Gilderoy."

There is another matter of a different kind on which the language of statistics is also ambiguous. The relations of the sexes constitute a most important branch of economical science, and in no point is information of more value than where it refers to female purity or to the circumstances affecting marriage. We have now generally in our registers a good enumeration of the legitimate and illegitimate births that occur among us, but I wish to point out some of the hazards or uncertainties by which these are surrounded. In Scotland, as a whole, there is undoubtedly a considerable proportion of births that are illegitimate; but the proportion varies much in different localities. Ten per cent. is not by any means the highest proportion; but let us suppose two districts, A and B, where the proportion is much smaller, say 5 per cent. in each. What does this indicate? It may proceed from a greater degree of moral purity, as fewer examples of unmarried cohabitation will, of course, diminish the number of illegitimate births. But the small proportion of those births may possibly be produced by a totally opposite cause; for it is equally certain that extreme licentiousness of morals, and especially any professional profligacy among women, has a tendency to diminish the number of children born. So that district A, with a small percentage of illegitimate births, may be a very moral district, and district B, with the same small percentage, may be full of prostitutes and other dissolute women, who, from that very character, seldom or never give birth to children at all.

I mention these fallacies in statistical studies, not with the view of discrediting the science, but in order to show the necessity of looking below the surface, and of pausing in our deductions till we are sure that we have all the necessary materials for judging. The subject I have just touched upon is intimately connected with the habits of a population as to the contracting of marriage. Early marriages have necessarily a tendency to check illicit intercourse, and are often encouraged with that view. The Catholic clergy are supposed to recommend, if not to enforce, such marriages with a view to the moral purity of their flocks. But it ought to be remembered that the remedy involves other evils of its own; and it may be suggested that, if female chastity can only be preserved by the marriage of young persons when little better than children, this is not a very high tribute to the prevalence of good principles, nor a result that is a just subject of pride. I suspect, indeed, that other ecclesiastical bodies besides the Catholics have the same tendency to encourage early marriages. A Presbyterian minister in Ulster told me that in the first marriage which he celebrated in his congregation, the united ages of the parties were under 30, and he baptized a child for them a year afterwards. No great good can come of a system such as that, particularly if it be accompanied, as it often is in Ireland, with a further subdivision of the paternal farm for the support of the young couple. A healthy opinion in a people to discourage early marriages, and at the same time to enforce good moral conduct, is a manifest cause of prosperity; and it is said to explain in a great degree the thriving condition of the Norwegian peasantry. But artificial restraints on marriage, without a high standard of morals, do no good. In Bavaria, it seems, from local and partial interests, various legal checks are imposed upon marriages. But, as has been said, "they do not care to check concubinage; and thus the number of illegitimate births in Munich is nearly as large as that of legitimate."

Deductions from the Registrar's Returns.

In connexion with this subject, I feel called upon to say that I consider our

Registers in Scotland to be, generally speaking, in a most satisfactory state, particularly in the important department of Vital statistics, as to which the reports of the Registrar-General, embodying the reports made to him by Dr. Stark, contain reliable information of the most interesting and important kind. One singular result that seems to have been established by the tables there given is, that at every quinquennial period of life, from 20 years of age up to 85, married men die in Scotland at a much lower rate than unmarried men. Sometimes the difference is very great, particularly between 20 and 45, up to which period it approximates to as high a rate as 2 to 1; but after that, the difference, though less, is still very considerably in favour of the married men. The subject is more complicated as regards women, from obvious causes; though here, too, marriage seems to be the more favoured state. As regards both sexes, the advantage on the side of marriage is easily accounted for up to a certain point. Generally speaking, those who marry are likely as a class to be better lives than those who do not. The unmarried will infallibly include a greater number of sickly or diseased constitutions than the married class. Without professing myself an implicit believer in Darwin, I acknowledge the truth of several of his statements in his 'Descent of Man,' as to what he calls Sexual selection. As a general rule, the attachments that lead to marriage will be prompted by considerations that are intimately connected with health and strength. Good looks, cheerful tempers, and buoyant constitutions are great attractions, and those who are wholly devoid of these, as well as those who are the victims of positive bad health, will often be excluded from having tickets in the matrimonial lottery. No doubt causes occur not unfrequently which disturb these natural tendencies. Some of these causes are allowable or laudable, others are the reverse. In a few cases affection leading to marriage may be inspired by great virtue, or great talent, or high accomplishments, though not associated with health or strength. In other cases, connexions may be formed that are wholly unconnected with love-as where rank, or wealth, or influence may overcome the natural repugnance excited by deformity or disease. Burns, I think it is, that says—

"Be a lassie ne'er sae black,

If she hae the penny siller,
Set her upon Tintock tap-

The wind will blaw a man till her."

Still, as a general rule, both men and women who are married are likely, on an average, to have more health and vitality than those who remain single. As regards the male sex, again, those of them that are of dissolute habits or unsettled and thriftless dispositions, are not so likely to marry as those who are orderly and well-conducted, and in favourable circumstances of life. But after making allowance for these elements, it still appears that the death-rate of married men is at all periods of life lower than that of the unmarried. This can be accounted for only on the footing that marriage is favourable to health, by conducing to regular habits of life, and by giving natural scope to the domestic affections. It cannot be doubted, for instance, that an old man who has a wife to take care of him, will be much better looked after than if he lived alone. It is not necessary in adopting this view to suppose that the married life is to be wholly free from sorrows, cares, and anxieties. Even these are not always prejudicial to health; and we are, perhaps, the better for them when they are well encountered. Neither is it essential that the matrimonial current should always run a smooth course. Most of us, probably, would agree with the view taken by Paley, who, when an old clergyman at an episcopal dinner asserted that he had been married for forty years, but had never had a difference with his wife, observed quietly to the bishop that "it must have been very flat." An occasional ripple will occur in all water, unless it be frozen over, and perhaps after marriage, as well as before it, there may be truth in the maxim, "Amantium iræ amoris redintegratio."

In referring to this matter it has occurred to me to consider whether, if the lower death-rate of married persons is an ascertained fact, this may not partly account for the general success of Life insurance offices when well conducted. It is clear that an office transacting on the usual calculations of mortality, has advantages of various kinds. In particular, its medical examinations, which are a most important part