1800 2.8 218 1810 4.4 1820 8. 214 10.5 203 17.3 185 20.9 167 28.3 166 34.2 169 48.6 140 204 13.8 194 22. 172 24.4 143 31.2 156 34.3 159 52.2 131 7.8 206 12.8 191 17.8 186 25.3 169 30.3 150 43.7 146 53.7 151 67.6 147 10. 201 165 28.3 163 32.9 159 48.2 139 56.1 140 73.1 136 56.1 140 73.1 Averages 5.1 212 10.7 201 17.3 183 21. (13) The results thus presented to the reader, are too striking and decisive to need any remark, or, indeed, to admit of any contradiction. In one line of a single column only, and that consisting but of one State (in the enumeration of which, as before observed, there must certainly be some mistake), is there the slightest deviation from the principle in question, as deduced from the whole body of facts contained in three successive censuses, thus minutely divided. To dwell, therefore, on the proofs derived from the statistics of America, on the law of population, as unfolded in these pages, is unnecessary; to withstand them, it is conceived, is impossible. 501 CHAPTER XVII. OF THE LAW OF POPULATION, AS PROVED BY THE EFFECTS UPON HUMAN PROLIFICNESS OF AN INCREASE OF THE INHABITANTS OF TOWNS. (1) HAVING shewn, in a preceding chapter, that human prolificness is so strictly regulated, as not only to vary with the number of the inhabitants in an equal space, in countries and districts, but in proportion to the size and population of towns also, I proceed, in conformity with the method hitherto pursued, to prove that, in the latter, the fecundity of marriages has likewise diminished as the population has augmented. I feel persuaded, after the evidence already advanced, that this part of the argument will be deemed superfluous: it shall therefore be treated with much brevity. (2) It cannot be denied, that as many of the towns of England have, within comparatively short periods, risen from the condition of what would now be deemed villages to their present size; so, in conformity with the principle contended for, the prolificness of marriages, in such places, ought to exhibit a marked diminution. (3) I shall exemplify and substantiate this fact by referring to recorded documents, decisive of this subject, regarding six only of the towns of England; taking the largest in rotation, again to avoid, as I have hitherto done, the errors, or at least suspicions, which always attend an arbitrary selection of proofs, I shall calculate the prolificness of these by the usual method, that of dividing the sum of the births, of a given number of years, by the sum of the marriages of the corresponding ones, as I am convinced, after no little consideration of the subject, that it is a more safe mode, on the whole, than the one now sometimes adopted; and preferable, more especially, because it enables us to institute those comparisons, with regard to former results of the same nature, that were similarly calculated, which could not otherwise be done. I may, however, be permitted to state, that I had formed the following, and, indeed, most of the preceding computations, in the other method also; and, I hardly need add, with precisely the same comparative results, on which, it is superfluous to repeat, the whole argument is necessarily founded. (4) In the following instances I shall take four periods: the first, anterior to the date of the published registers of marriages and births in this country; the second, commencing with those accounts, namely, with the year 1755, the first year in which the Marriage Act came into full operation, calculating the prolificness of the marriages in that year on the average of the births of 1750 and 1760; the third, from the year 1790 to 1800; terminating with the last decenniary given in the census of 1821. In both the latter cases, the prolificness is computed on the amount of the births and marriages during each term. I may again repeat, that I am not responsible for the absolute correctness of these accounts; nor is the argument the least affected by a contrary supposition, it is their comparative accuracy on which it rests: and we are assured they have been progressively improving, at least during the last period; former deficiencies will, therefore, evidently strengthen the conclusion at which I am about to arrive. It has (5) To commence with the metropolis. been already seen, that the fertility of marriages there, at about the termination of the seventeenth century, was calculated at 4 children each'. In 1755, computed as before explained, it had fallen to 3.522; the concluding ten years of the last century, to 2.363; and from 1810 to 1820, notwithstanding the improvement in the registers, to 2.35*. (6) Concerning Manchester, I find in Dr. Short's collections, that from 1731 to 1752, the population of the town being under 9000, the fecundity of marriages was 4.37 children each5; in 1755, it was 2.44 only; in 1790-18007, (the population at the latter date having increased to 84,000,) it had fallen to 2; and in the last term, the inhabitants having increased to above half as many again, it sunk as low as 1.728. (7) Liverpool affords a yet more striking example of the operation of the principle in question. Less than three centuries ago it had not the number of inhabitants now found in many inconsiderable villages. It has, since that period, gone through almost every stage of population; in its first state it was a "small fishing place," and consequently, agreeably to the observations made elsewhere, ought to exhibit a high degree of prolificness; and such is the fact. The registers, as given by Dr. Enfield, from 1662 to 1700, as well as those inserted in Sir F. M. Eden's Parochial Reports, relating to about the same period, give so large a degree of fruitfulness, as to render their inaccuracy quite obvious. The births and marriages Gregory King, Polit. Conclusions. Chalmers' Estimate, p. 420. 2 Abstract, Parish Registers, 1801, p. 448. 3 Ibid., Appendix, p. 448. Ibid., 1821, p. 158. Short, Comparative History, p. 39. Abstract, Parish Registers, p. 149. 7 Ibid., p. 149. 8 Ibid., 1821, p. 60. In Nov. 1565, there were in Liverpool only 138 householders and Cottagers.-Enfield's Liverpool, p. 11. |