In this country we have now from government more and better statistics than from any other source; for besides the decennial census, there is the yearly produce in this way of Crown Commissions and of Parliamentary Committees; and, moreover, there is the late institution of a statistical department in connexion with the Board of Trade, for arranging, digesting, and rendering more accessible all matter of this kind collected, from time to time, by the different branches of the administration. But before statistical knowledge became the object of much care to the government of this country, it had been well cultivated by individuals. So in Germany statistics first took a scientific form in the works of an individual about the middle of the last century: and in France, the unfinished _Mémoires des Intendants_, prepared on the order of the king, were scarcely an exception, since meant for the private instruction of the young prince. But without attaching undue importance to the fact of mere precedence, it may be said that, considering the chief uses of this kind of knowledge, it has received more contributions from individuals than could have been expected. This admits of being easily explained. It has been well said that, while history is a sort of current statistics, statistics are a sort of stationary history. The one has therefore much the same invitations to mere literary taste as the other; and if the subject be not so generally engaging, the fancy way be as strong, and produce as pure a devotion to statistics as there ever is to history. More than this, the statist may care far less for his subject than its uses,--that is, he may choose to undergo the toil of researches only recommended by the chance of their ministering to the better guidance of some part of public policy, and therefore to the public good. The impulse is then not literary; nor is it legislative, for the power is wanting; it is simply patriotic, for so it must be considered, even when, in the words of Mr M'Culloch, the object is only "to bring under the public view the deficiencies in statistical information, and so to contribute to the advancement of the science." This public nature of the aim of statistical works, and the unlikelihood of their authors choosing that medium to set forth anything supposed worthy of notice in the figure of their own genius, seem to have been recognised, except in rare instances, as giving to works of this kind a title to be well received, and to have their faults very gently remarked.