dity, (at least such is the assumption of those who have attempted to estimate the fruitful portion of the standing marriages of a community,) I think it will be difficult to deny, with any shew of reason or truth, that the preventive check would have an effect on the increase of population exactly opposite to that which its advocates imagine. But another fact remains to be noticed, which will make that conclusion still more certain; namely, the greater degree of mortality which attends the offspring of early marriages: a circumstance of which, it has already been shewn, the philosophers and legislators of antiquity, as well as the most diligent observers in modern days, have been fully aware. This will fully appear from the following table, taken also from the facts supplied by the document already appealed to. The first column again expresses the ages, classed, as before, into sections of four years; the second, the marriages which took place in each period; the third, the living births of such marriages; the fourth, the surviving children of those births at the period of the last pregnancy; the fifth, which gives the difference between the two last mentioned columns, expresses, of course, the deaths which had occurred amongst the whole number of the children; and the sixth, and last, shews the proportion of mortality to a living birth which occurred on the average of every such section, and is, therefore, the result sought.

TABLE XLIV.

SHEWING THE EFFECT THE POSTPONEMENT OF THE MARRIAGES OF FEMALES HAS UPON THE MORTALITY of their Offspring.

(17) It will be observed, that I have carried the foregoing table no further than the termination of the thirty-second year, The numbers of the marriages ter that age are, in the original document, very few

and irregular in their results. Should it be thought necessary, however, to proceed in the comparison, it may be done by reference to its last column but one, when it will be seen that the annual average number of the surviving children increases to the last; the first section giving that proportion as .182225; that from 33 to 36, as .237643; and the last, consisting of two years only, namely, 37 and 39, as .250000. It will be time enough, however, to argue about the effects of postponing the marriages of the females till after the thirty-third year, when any one is found besotted enough to dispute concerning a proposition which, if carried into effect, would fill a nation with orphans from one end of it to the other, and when, therefore,

the population, whether few or many, would be superfluous indeed!

(18) It may be, perhaps, objected to the whole of the foregoing proofs, that they are derived from a register which cannot profess to give the whole number of children which the marriages it records shall produce, from their commencement to their termination, but only those which have been born to each up to a period within those limits, all the facts which it can record being necessarily retrospective ones. I shall, therefore, proceed to another series of proofs of the same principle, which will at once silence every such exception, and afford a strong additional demonstration of its truth. These are derived from the registers of the peerage, which, as I have observed elsewhere, I have gone through in order to collect a body of authentic facts illustrative of many of the principles advanced in these volumes. As far as they relate to the subject before us, those facts are as follows.

TABLE XLV.

SHEWING THE EFFECT OF THE POSTPONEMENT OF THE MARRIAGES OF THE PEERESSES ON THEIR PROLIFICNESS, AND ON THE MORTALITY OF THEIR OFFSPRING.

(19) The above table, which commences with the earliest period of female marriage in the registers of the peerage, and proceeds fifteen years beyond it, divided, as the preceding ones, into sections of four years, gives the following results in each division; first, the average prolificness of the marriages; secondly, the proportion of deaths to a birth, previously to the latter

attaining the average nubile age; and, thirdly, the actual increase, or the balance of the two last proportions.

TABLE XLVI.

SHEWING THE EFFECT OF THE POSTPONEMENT OF THE MARRIAGES OF THE PEERESSES, ON BOTH THEIR PROLIFICNESS AND THE PRESERVATION OF THEIR OFFSPRING.

(20) Thus, then, does it plainly appear that amongst the wealthy as well as the poor the same law of Nature prevails; and, consequently, it is universal. As far as the preceding table goes, not only are the marriages more prolific the longer they are deferred, but the deaths in their offspring are, proportionably, less numerous; causing, therefore, by this inverse ratio of fecundity and mortality, the later marriages to be far more conducive to permanent increase than the former ones. Beyond the limits of the preceding table, the marriages of females, most especially in this rank of society, become comparatively few in number; and when they do take place in the peerage, they are principally contracted with widowers, or with males at a considerably advanced period in life. I may, however, remark, that I could have extended it to an additional section of four years, that is, up to the thirty-second, and have