bleed, what sight can be so pitiable as that of a poor little, friendless, helpless, half-starved, almost naked child of profligate parents, in their profligacy tyrannical and cruel? At such a sight as this, the sad and penitent Christian will indeed smite upon his breast and say with David, "Lo, I have sinned; with all my many advantages and blessings I have done wickedly; but these lambs, what have they done?"

Would to God that this question, thus asked, might compel men to devise a remedy, and to divert from the country the curse which must result from such an education as this.

The heathen philosopher reasoned thus:-The welfare of the country depends upon the right education of the children who are to become her citizens. To secure that education children shall be taken from their parents, whether the parents be willing to part with them or not, and shall be educated at the public expense.

"Not only the boy who comes to school at the will of his father, but he, too, who neglects his education from the fault of his father, as the saying is, every man and boy must be compelled to learn according to his ability, as they belong to the State rather than their parents."

This was, no doubt, taking an extreme view of the case, and an iniquitous unnatural proceeding it would be to interfere between the righteous parent and the child; but still there is a substratum of truth. The State has a right to interpose in the child's name, when the parent withholds from his child what the child has a right, through the common claims of nature, to demand.

Is not every English child an inheritor of British rights? Is a British babe born in slavery-born to be the slave of a godless tyrannical parent? Has he not a right to some portion of the nation's wealth? Has not the poor little, helpless, innocent child a right to say, if he could find an advocate-if some other Henry Brougham should arise to complete the work, overcoming the difficulties which we have met to.surmount, which our noble president so nobly commenced"I demand of my country a good education." Have not the poor little creatures a right to say, if it were worth anyone's while to plead their cause, when their parents are besotted in the spirit shop, "Feed me, clothe me, rescue me from destruction, train me to love my country, whose laws my parents teach me to violate and to hate. Oh! save my soul alive by bringing me to that Saviour through whom alone your own salvation is effected. Oh! suffer, suffer little children to

Plato, Leg. vii., 11.

come to Christ; suffer them to come whom by your social regulations you now repel!"

The establishment of industrial schools in our large towns is a movement in the right direction. There the fatherless and the pauper children are educated, in many places kindly educated, I bear testimony, almost affectionately educated; they are boarded, lodged, and clothed, instructed in some trade, and sent forth as citizens a blessing to their country, and as Christians prepared to serve the Lord.

Why not extend the system further? Why not claim for the country every child who is found begging in the streets? Why not insist on every parent who neglects his duty to a poor little innocent child, yielding up that little one to the country? Why not insist upon the country's duty to educate her citizens; the duty of the Church to bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord?

The political economist here interposes. If we were to undertake the education of all children whose education is neglected, or conducted iniquitously by the parents, if we were to feed them, clothe them, teach them, at the public expense, we should only give encouragement to neglect and vice; no parent immersed in vice would care for his child, and the increase of the population would become an overwhelming evil. The same objections might be urged which have been urged against such institutions as the Foundling Hospital.

We would not for a moment countenance the vulgar outcry which ignorance is sometimes heard to raise against the science of political economy; on the contrary, we would invoke its aid. They who, to become the legislators of a free country, study the science of political economy, are, in virtue of their vocation, bound to devise the means of accomplishing the greatest possible amount of good, while, at the same time, they guard against the evil consequences which in greater or less degree must always dog the steps of human actions.

We admit the many difficulties which present themselveswe would state them to their full extent

"Benefacta male locata, malefacta arbitror."

But where is the use of political science, if it does not find a remedy for a great, a crying evil-evil which, if unremedied, will rebound to the destruction of society? Surely the very object of this National Association for the Promotion of Social Science is to discover-to make the grand discovery of a measure by which, without detriment to society at large, the

rights, I say, the rights not yet acknowledged, of babes and infants may be sustained.

We talk of the rights of men, the rights of women, let us clamour for the rights of babes. A nation cannot, I repeat it again and yet again, be justified in saying to a poor little helpless child-"You have been cursed with a profligate father, you have been cursed with an unnatural mother, you have been cursed by dissolute companions; under a special curse you were born, and by our neglect, by our carelessness, by our selfishness, by our want of consideration of your rights and claims, under a curse you shall remain. We cannot or will not help you. We will not teach you to distinguish between right and wrong. We will not habituate you to love your neighbour and your God; but when you do wrong we will imprison you, we will scourge you, we will subject you to hard labour and penal servitude; or, peradventure, we may suspend you between heaven and earth, and cause you to die the felon's death."

57

Address

BY

EDWIN LANKESTER, M.D., F.R.S.

ON HEALTH.

UDDENLY called upon to fulfil the important duties of President of the Public Health Department of the Association, I do not feel myself at all prepared to do justice to the subjects on which I am this morning expected to discourse. At the same time, I am so fully impressed with the value of the contributions made to our Transactions from year to year, by the addresses of the Presidents of our Departments, that I should be sorry to set the example of declining a duty, however unworthily I may perform it, that would lead to the imperfect fulfilment of this part of our annual proceedings. In doing this, I feel that I must rather bring before you the general principles of the various branches of science on which our Department of the Association is founded, than dwell upon details which would have required a larger amount of time and leisure than I have had at my disposal, to collect and arrange.

In the minds of those who attend the meetings of this Association from year to year, there can be little doubt that the inquiries embraced by the Departments of this Association, are as much based upon scientific principles, and are as amenable to law, as any of those more generally admitted branches of science cultivated by the British Association for the Advancement of Science. It has, however, been the fashion of those who cultivate the natural sciences, to declaim against Social Science, as though it pursued its investigations in a different spirit, or had less satisfactory methods of inquiry. It is very certain, that if our laws, our education, our health and trade, had no better foundations for their existence than the prejudices and opinions of mankind, there could be no more

ignoble and uninteresting work, than for men to meet together and babble about them. But, if I understand this Association rightly, it has been established for the purpose of showing to the world that there is a science of society; that just as we can inquire into the functions of a plant, and discover the laws of its existence, so that we can predict with certainty what will occur to it under certain known conditions; so, with regard to man, even in his most complicated relations, we may hope to discern the laws of his being, and, by predicting what must happen under certain conditions of his existence, constitute the science of society. Nor is this a new idea. The thought that even the complicated phenomena of human life might be reduced to law, was present to the mind of the great thinkers of ancient. Greece. Lord Bacon saw that the rational method of inquiring into the properties and laws of natural objects did not terminate with the body of man, but applied to the results of the reaction of his thought and feeling on the external world. The great French philosopher Comte (mistaken, as most English writers believe him to be, on so many points of science and philosophy) was the first to define the limits of Social Science, to give it a name, and place it in a classification of the natural sciences. But, above all men, we in England are indebted to that great political philosopher and acute logician, John Stuart Mill, for clearing away all difficulties, and, with a philosophical insight and comprehensiveness of thought unrivalled in our day, showing that the science of society could be placed on the same scientific basis as astronomy, chemistry, or physiology. To almost any other mind, the possibility of the reduction of the chaos of facts presented by that wonderful mass of phenomena exhibited in the history and social conditions of man upon the earth, to anything like law and scientific prediction, would have presented insuperable difficulties; but he has shown the way, and it is the function of the Social Science Association to follow in the path that he and his disciples have opened to us.

Fortunately for society, its main facts rest on the branches. of science presenting less complicated phenomena than itself, so that as these sciences advance it also is advanced. Let me give an illustration. There is Oersted, holding his magnetic needle on the galvanic current. He is studying the relations of those great forces, magnetism and galvanism. He discovers the laws of that relation. In the hands of others this law is imported into the transactions between men. It becomes the

* Auguste Comte's "Philosophie Positif." Paris, 1830,