Failing in business as a sugar-broker, he took up economics and statistics, and in 1831 contributed an essay on life assurance to Charles Knight's Companion to the Almanac.
In 1832, Knight declined an invitation from George Eden, 1st Earl of Auckland to digest for the Board of Trade the information contained in parliamentary reports and papers; but he recommended Porter for the task.
He was one of the promoters, in 1834, of the Statistical Society, of which he became vice-president and treasurer in 1841; and he took an interest in the proceedings of section F of the British Association.
There was an engraved portrait of him in the rooms of the Statistical Society, Adelphi Terrace, London.
[3] His best-known work was The Progress of the Nation in its various Social and Economical Relations, from the beginning of the Nineteenth Century to the present time (3 editions.