penditure in the various establishments. The information possessed as to the pecuniary resources of many of our public schools is very fragmentary and unsatisfactory, but quite enough to show the desirableness of a more efficient revision and control. It would be possible to institute investigations as to the expenditure incurred and the benefits conferred. And after ascertaining what has been done, comes the still more important question, as to what ought to be done, both for adults and for the young. What are the numbers of those who are utterly abandoned? At what cost can they be provided for? And how best provided for? The statistics of education enforced by law may be studied on the Prussian returns; but most advantageously perhaps in the Canton of Appenzel, where an uneducated person is scarcely to be found, and where the sums applied to public instruction exceed the amounts expended on all the other departments of the State. Some of the United States of America, particularly Massachusetts, could afford more instructive statistical details. Pope says, wisely, "The proper study of mankind is man." Not only man in masses, but men as individuals. To discover the special tendencies and aptitudes of a child, with a view to their guidance and development, is to give the child the best chances of success in the future struggles of life. As the same medicine will not suit different diseases, so the discipline which encourages, controls, or corrects, should be suited to the individual character. Bankruptcy returns occupy an important place in the field of commercial inquiry. The number of bankrupts; the amount of their debts; the causes of the inefficiency of the laws which fail to protect the creditor against the fraudulent debtor; the aptitude of the machinery created for giving effect to those laws. For these and similar inquiries statistics afford the only safe foundation for legislation. The number of books collected in the great libraries represent the gathered wisdom of the past, and the number of volumes is pretty accurately ascertained. But the quantity of books published in different countries is very imperfectly known, and of those deemed worthy of translation the list is very small. Of the least known and studied languages of the world, the literature is almost ignored in the great interchange of minds; but as the valuable books in the most accessible idioms are explored and exhausted, attention will no doubt be turned to regions less visited. The statistics of books published in different regions may furnish pabulum for future authors. May not the study of statistics have a moralizing effect upon public opinion? May it not influence sovereigns and legislators when the cost of great national evils, and sometimes of great national crimes, is taken into account? Ask, for example, the returns of the waste of human life, of the sacrifices of money, which we owe to the devastation of war-though these sacrifices are not confined to statistical tables, but ramify into all the branches of human suffering-and it is hoped that the startling facts in figures which have been published connected with international hostilities, may not be deemed inappropriate, as they certainly cannot fail to be instructive. Sir Walter Trevelyan has expressed an opinion that government in our army system encourages intemperance and vice. He states that the expense of enforcing the Contagious Diseases Act has increased in one year from 28,000l. to 40,000l., and the hospital rates from 275,5897. to 380,771. The recruiting in public-houses, the bad character of the enlisted, the habits of drunkenness, the allowance of beer money to the soldiers, and the Prince Regent's allowance of his pint of wine to the officers, are all contributory to the habits of inebrity, while debauchery itself has received a sort of public sanction under the idea that it is preventive of greater evils. The law which releases a soldier from any responsibility to maintain his family, or to provide for his illegitimate children, has served to protect, and even to encourage, immorality. If the speculations of astronomy and geography, infinite in their extent as they seem to be, are gathered into the regions of arithmetical calculation, not less are the phenomena of lifedescending into the limitless depths of microscopical observation -destined to be brought into the statistical area. The millions of animated beings which dwell in a drop of water, or are bred upon the covering of a fly, will be subject to calculations like the pollen of a flower, the roe of a herring; the distance, magnitude, or number of heavenly bodies; or the processes by which all that is has been brought down from all that was, in the grand continuity whose origin is untraceable. Professor Huxley feels, as every one, the use, not to say the necessity, of employing figures, to present points of comparison or notions of extent. In these days we give a wider range to these thoughts which appeared mysterious to the half-instructed, and were utterly unintelligible to the vulgar-such as the great truth thateverything is in everything "-which is, in fact, but to say that there is all-controlling influence, a common law, which some call providence, and others fate, but which holds in subjection all space, all time, and whatever belongs to either. Happily, to every being is given a work to do-a purpose to fulfil; and the succession of human beings, generation after generation, are but some of the multitudinous instruments for effecting the great but inevitable result. Another section of the Association has been engaged in discussing the great questions of International Law and International Arbitration. These questions are so intimately connected with economical and commercial interests, that I should have ventured to supplement what I have said by some remarks on what has happily become one of the most interesting and exciting topics of the day. It is obvious that a reference to a friendly and well-constituted tribunal for the settlement of matters which have so frequently led to the "outslip of the dogs of war," could not but greatly serve the interests of economy and commerce-nothing can be more opposed than war to the cultivation of brotherly affections, nor to the extension of trade. Civilization has done something, much less than it ought to have done, for the suppression of internecine quarrels ; it has more effectually broken down the barriers which separated town from town, district from district, province from province, which are now almost universally allowed to trade with one another. Every reason which justifies the removal of local restrictions applies to the Custom-house codes of nations; and, if not for the adjacent present, we may anticipate for a remoter future the abolition of tariffs grounded on a supposed hostility of interests-an hostility which has no foundation in fact. I will only say that Bentham, whom Talleyrand called the wisest man he had ever known, has laid down the foundation of a system of international law, with proper machinery for enforcing a code, with a view to accommodating general principles to the different conditions of national law. He would have tribunals of war as well as tribunals of peace. The principle of arbitration has been recognised by Austria, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Belgium, and others. Let due honour be done to Leopold I., who took the initiative in this important matter. The melancholy history of the treaties which have been negotiated during the last two or three centuries will show that arrangements hostile to national and international interests have been scattered to the winds. The pressure of necessities, misunderstandings with great nations, have introduced an era little anticipated by the last generation. With Lord Palmerston, all argument failed: he insisted that Great Britain was sufficiently strong to obtain the recognition of her rights and the redress of her wrongs. The voice of reason, truth, and justice have spoken authoritatively at Geneva, and its echoes will be heard through the civilized world. |