Reprinted from Macmillan's Magazine, December, 1861.

“Cure the world by science!” said an irate old gentleman to us this year in Dublin. “ Don't talk to me of your Social Science! Make people read their Bibles, and teach their children, and keep their houses clean, and attend to their business instead of the alehouse; but don't talk balderdash about Social Science! Science indeed! Social Science! pshaw!”

Vain would it have been, no doubt, to try to persuade that excellent practical philanthropist that, like M. Jourdain, who had been “talking prose all his life without ever suspecting it,” so he had been similarly studying Social Science ; and that it even takes no small share of the same to teach people all the good things he desired. Equally hopeless would it be to argue with one who should question whether the evils of pauperism, crime, and vice were more likely to be cured by chance and isolated efforts, than by the intelligent method and co-operation of persons devoted to the task, and studying, as a science, the solemn problems of human misery, and its possible relief. The late meeting in Dublin of the Association for the Promotion of Social Science may be counted so definitely a success, as to establish the right of such congresses to be ranked among the more prominent institutions of our times.