"The progress toward institutions more and more popular may be slow, but it is sure. Whenever any class has conceived the hope of being fairly represented, it is certain to fulfil its own hopes, unless it employs or provokes, violence, impossible in England. The thing will be[1] ....
"If any young gentlemen look forward .... to a Conservative reaction of any other kind than this .... to even the least stoppage of What the world calls progress—which I should define as the putting in practice the results of inductive science—then do they, like King Picrochole in Rabelais, look for a kingdom which shall be restored to them at the coming of the Cocqcigrues."[2]
And in a preface addressed to working-men, contained in an earlier edition, he says:—
"If you are better off than you were in 1848, you owe it principally to those laws of political economy (as they are called) which I call the brute natural accidents of supply and demand, etc."[3]
Which passages offer explanations of changes now gone by as having been wrought out by natural forces in conformity with natural laws, and also predictions of changes which social forces at present in action will work out. That is to say, by the help of generalized experiences there is an interpretation of past phenomena and a prevision of future phenomena. There is an implicit recognition of that Social Science which is explicitly denied.
A reply to these criticisms may be imagined. In looking for whatever reconciliation seems possible between these positions, which seem so incongruous, we must suppose the intended assertion to be, that general interpretations and previsions only can be made, not those which are special. Bearing in mind Mr. Froude's occasional explanations of historical phenomena as naturally caused, we must conclude that he believes certain classes of sociological facts (as the politico-economical) to be scientifically explicable, while other classes are not; though, if this be his view, it is not clear how, if the results of men's wills, separate or aggregated, are incalculable, politico-economical actions can be dealt with scientifically, since, equally with other social actions, they are determined by aggregated wills. Similarly, Canon Kingsley, recognizing no less distinctly economical laws, and enunciating also certain laws of progress—nay, even warning his hearers against the belief that he denies the applicability of the inductive method to social phenomena—must be assumed to think that the applicability of scientific methods is here but partial. Citing the title of his address, he will possibly hold its implication to be merely that there are limits to the explanation of social facts in precise ways; though this position does not seem really reconcilable with the doctrine that social laws are liable to be at any time suspended, providentially or otherwise.
