section of Parliament banters his more eventful rival, and enlivening
his criticism by a sneer at our Congress, challenges the contempt
of his rival, as if to draw it forth in the same critical direction.
Alas! it is too true that great congresses, like great men, and even
like Parliaments, do live sometimes for many years and talk much, and
seem to miss much and advance little; so that in what relates to the
mere present it were wrong, possibly, to challenge the sally of
the statesman who, from his own helpless height, looked down on our
weakness. But inasmuch as no man knoweth the end of the spoken word,
as that which is spoken to-day, earnestly and simply, may not reappear
for years, and may then appear with force and quality of hidden
virtue, there is reason for our uniting together beyond the proof of
necessity which is given in the fact of our existence. Perchance some
day our natural learning, gathered in our varied walks of life, and
submitted in open council, may survive even Parliamentary strife;
perchance our resolutions, though no sign-manual immediately grace
them, are the informal bills which ministers and oppositions shall
one day discuss, Parliaments pass, royal hands sign, and the fixed
administrators of the will of the nation duly administer.

These thoughts on the future, rather than on the passing influence
of our congressional work, have led me to the simple design of the
address which, as President of this Section, I venture to submit to
you to-day. It is my object to put forward a theoretical outline of
a community so circumstanced and so maintained by the exercise of
its own freewill, guided by scientific knowledge, that in it the
perfection of sanitary results will be approached, if not actually
realised, in the co-existence of the lowest possible general mortality
with the highest possible individual longevity. I shall try to show
a working community in which death,--if I may apply so common and