TABLE XXXIII.

EXHIBITING THE MARRIAGES IN THE MOST MORTAL AND THE MOST HEALTHFUL YEAR OF EACH OF THE SECTIONS IN THE FOREGOING TABLE, FROM SUSMILCH.

(13) Thus is the constantly repeated appeal of Mr. Malthus to this table of Susmilch, in proof of the striking effect which mortalities have on the registers, in making room for marriages, exactly and finally determined. In the most mortal years of each of the thirteen sections, the deaths being, in such years, 222,120, the marriages were 70,149 only; but in the

1 The table terminating with the year ing are taken at the average number of 1756, the marriages of the year follow- the section.

least mortal years the deaths amounting to 177,597 only, an immense difference, and requiring, according to Mr. Malthus, a corresponding diminution in the marriages, the latter amounted, however, to 73,460; more, by 3266, than in the years when his theory, and this appeal in favour of it, require that there should have been so much smaller a number.

The

(14) But there is another column given in the preceding extract from Susmilch's table, to which the reader's attention is requested, as answering, by anticipation, the only conceivable objection to this final conclusion. In order to give every possible advantage to Mr. Malthus's argument, the marriages of the years next following the mortal ones are inserted, which affords a latitude in the construction of his terms "very sudden and prodigious," full as ample as the words admit. Now, I am free to confess that on many considerations I should have reconciled the fact to my views of the subject, had I found these subsequent years distinguished by the marriages being somewhat more numerous than those in the healthy ones. necessities of many whose marriages had been dissolved by the death of one of the parties, in these unusually great mortalities, inducing them to re-enter the marriage state; and the feelings of others, who, after the wound death inflicts on the heart, seek, in due time, solace in the connubial state, as the patriarch Isaac did after the death of his mother; these considerations, I say, rather prepared me to expect an excess of marriages at about such a period after extraordinary mortalities; yet this is not the fact. The reasons advanced in the commencement of this chapter, in proof that increasing and not diminishing numbers conduce to plenty and happiness, and consequently encourage those connexions which are the best evidences of them,

still prevail and more than balance all those other circumstances: still, death does not make room for marriage in the sense attempted to be fixed upon us: witness again this table, to which Mr. Malthus has ventured so often to refer. In the years immediately succeeding the most mortal ones, the marriages, though increased as my argument demands, amount to 72,167 only; falling short, by upwards of a thousand, of the marriages of those years in which, according to the system I am combating, there was the least room for, and ought, therefore, to have been the fewest of them.

(15) This table of Susmilch's may likewise serve as an additional test of some of Mr. Malthus's peculiar notions in regard to the use of registers, which have been previously considered, and which he revives in the chapter under consideration. He says, " On an average of the 46 years after the plague, the pro" portion of annual births to annual marriages is as 43 "to 10; that is, according to the principles laid down "in the fourth chapter of this book, out of 43 children "born, 20 of them live to be married. The average "proportion of births to deaths during this period, is "157 to 100. But to produce such an increase, on "the supposition that only 20 children of 43, or 2 out "of 4%, live to be married, each marriage, I am persuaded, for the reasons given in that chapter, must "have yielded eight births'."

(16) Mr. Malthus thus not only repeats what he. had previously asserted at much length, that the proportion of annual marriages and annual births have absolutely nothing whatever to do with each other, but he here attempts to shew that the marriages and births regularly given, for nearly half a century, have likewise no more relation to each other; these, indeed

Malthus, Essay on Population, p. 258.

give a proportion of 4% to 1; but he is persuaded, for reasons given somewhere else, that the real number must in this case have been as 8 to 1. The extravagance of the latter supposition needs not to be pointed out; if the proportion of marriages, in all countries, actually barren, and the still greater number otherwise than prolific, be taken into the account, the usual size of the remaining families will necessarily be so increased as still further to expose an absurdity, which at first sight is sufficiently palpable. But, to dismiss mere conjecture, and to advert to recorded facts: the period in question includes several terms of the average duration of the prolificness of marriages; consequently, most of the marriages which took place during its whole duration, must have already given their whole number of births, which were of course included in the column expressing the annual number of them. Now, supposing the number of children included in this register, though resulting from the marriages which had been celebrated before the commencement of this period, and consequently, not entered in the document, to balance the number of children that would be born after its termination, which were, nevertheless, the product of marriages included in the register; then, as has been before shewn, the whole number of the births divided by that of the marriages, would give the actual and exact average prolificness of each of the latter during that period, instead of having no relation to each other. In this instance the variation is little, and cannot sensibly affect any calculation as to the prolificness of the whole term; and, moreover, that variation, be it noted, is in aid of my proof, the marriages of the five years before its commencement exceeding in number those of the five years at its termination. Appealing, then, to the

In

termed so" valuable and interesting a piece of information," for want of possessing which, it is said, Dr. Price, and almost all other writers in political arithmetic, have so "totally misapprehended the principle of population'," is, to adopt his own language, when applied to their calculations, "perfectly useless." fact, according to Mr. Malthus's explanation of the use of registers, casual and desultory observation would be a far surer guide on all matters connected with population than such documents. The disparaging language quoted respecting the laborious and useful pursuits of our best writers on these topics, and the imputation of total ignorance with which they are loaded, will be some apology for any warmth of expression into which I may have likewise fallen.

(19) Such then is the nature of Mr. Malthus's reasoning on this confessedly important branch of the subject-reasoning which he somewhere says will stand though the facts on which it professes to be founded should turn out to be erroneous3. I perfectly concur in this idea, singular as it seems; such reasoning in favour of the erroneous principle of population as we are often compelled to advert to, will indeed have a better chance of standing, the fewer and more fallacious are the facts on which it professes to be founded.

1 Malthus, Essay on Population, p. 261.

2

Ibid., p. 229.

3 Ibid., p. 296.