138 STUDIES IN STATISTICS CHAP.

CHAPTER XXII.

CONCLUSION.

In the preceding pages my constant endeavour has
been to lay before the reader, as clearly as possible, matters
which in their very nature are prone to be both difficult and
dull ; but in so doing there has been an almost inevitable
tendency to be either too prolix and detailed, or unduly
dogmatic. The general reader will therefore complain of
unnecessary detail, while the severe statistician will say that
I have thrown into the form of diagrams facts that should
rather have been displayed in lengthy tables. To both
forms of error I plead guilty.
The objects that I had in view were mainly two : Firstly,
to urge the economist and the politician to keep always in
view the scarcely perceptible changes due to the constant
growth of population—changes which they can indeed ill
afford to neglect; secondly, to indicate to medical writers
the vast mine of material existent in the voluminous returns
of the Registrar-General—material of which the great
majority of the medical profession scem to be still ignorant,
although it is plainly desirable that every hypothesis put
forward by searchers after the causes of disease should
be tried by the touchstone of this mass of crystallized
experience.
The cardinal fact for the statesman and political
economist 1s the marvellous growth of population that is