FALLACIES OF FIGURES.
The fallacies offigures of speech are not here meant : the character of these gay deceivers is well known, and men are on their guard against them. But those dull, plodding, mechanical fellows, the figures of COCKER and Htyrrox, have such a passionless air of ex- actness and accuracy, that any statement clinched by them is re- ceived without further inquiry. And yet greater romances have been embodied in numerals than in "numerous verse." Captain Bobadil, with his "twenty more, kill 'em," is an illustrious ex- ample : the arithmetical part of the Captain's argument has never been refuted, though his enemy's cudgel demonstrated that the conclusions drawn from it were untenable. And the estimate in a budget, and the proceeds of a tax as shown by the receipts of the next year, have often contrasted in a way that made the Bobadils of finance cut as awkward a figure as their great prototype. Our statistical inquirers, political economists, financiers, and agitators, make great abuse of figures. When they get hold of a sum or sums, they keep multiplying, and dividing, and stating ratios, with un- tiring assiduity, without ever troubling their heads as to whether the figures they are working upon represent facts. Poetry has been called by ascetic moralists (as Lord BACON tells us) " vinum dmmonum": and there is something of truth in the imputation. But the devilish ingredient in the liquor is not the breeze or the trees, the eyes or the sighs, the flowers or the bowers, which flash, and bloom, and grow verdant, in the poet's lines : it is a more snbtile element, which you cannot escape by taking refuge in the multiplication-table. Mr. Hums may be conceived, like POPE, to have "lisped in numbers," and the sage of Montrose is quite as imaginative though not quite so amusing as the sage of Twicken- ham. To follow up Lcrd BacoN'S metaphor and complete it by the returns of the Board of Trade, poetry may be said to stand to arithmetic in the relation of wine to porter. The great father of lies, in .clays of old, astonished the celestial world (aide MILTON) by appearing as an angel of' light : finding men on their guard against him in that seductive shape, he appears in efir days like a walking debtor and creditor account ; much in the same way that Multi- plication, Practice, and the Rule of Three, were last Christ- mas made to tread the stage bodily in a pantomime. And since the days of the South Sea bubble and the Mississippi scheme, no sooner does be show his face in this guise, than away go all ages and classes helter-skelter in pursuit of him. There is no assertion, however startling, made by any person of however questionable veracity, but will pass current if expressed in figures. Lord HUNTINGTOWER believed that EDMONDS, CAUTY, COPELAND, and Co. could make his fortune by contracting debts in his name. The Joint Stock Companies of 1825, with their tales of wealth from Brazilian, Peruvian, and Mexican mines—all deluded their victims by the rule of subtraction. Dr. PRICE led even the staid WILLIAM PITT astray with his ignis fatuus of a sinking-fund. The infatuation in favour of the figurative mode of arguing increases daily. The tables of the Government-offices groan, not like the City tables, which Lord Breouunast denounces in the House of Lords and praises in the Mansionhouse, beneath loads of viands, but beneath loads of figures. In the House of Com- mons, in the meetings of Free-traders, Colonizers, Agricultur- ists, nay of Missionaries, the controversialists pelt each other with calculations. In Scotland, Dr. CHALMERS has proved the vitality of the Kirk by the aid of the annuity-tables. In short, the public imagination, like poor Helen's in All's Well that Ends Well, "carries no favour in it but Cocker's." If figures go on multiplying at this rate, it will soon be impossible to deciphir the meaning of the reasoners. Poor Truth will be squeezed by tile force of numbers into a mere cipher. Mr. COBDEN and Mr. MONTGOMERY MARTIN, Mr. LABOUCHERE and Mr. GLADSTONE, Mr. CHADWICK and Mr. FERRAND, Dr. CHALMERS and Dr. WARDLAW, all stand upon their calculations. Their multiplication and division are irreproachable. They are all Michael Cassios in their way—all "great arithmeticians": but, somehow or other, their figures can- not be made to tally. All inquirers, expounders, and enforcers, really anxious to promote the truth, must begin earlier, and exa- mine more narrowly the authorities from whom they take their figures. They must recollect that there are some elements to be taken into account, in the great practical questions which agitate society, that are incapable of being expressed in definite numbers. They must think a little less of units, tens, and hundreds, and a little more of men's bodies and souls.
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