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uninhabited, numbering in 1817 only 1500 families'. Maine, therefore, being thus rectified, (and none will say that, in reference to the argument, it ought not to be so,) places itself in the fifth line of the above table, or precisely where it should have been in regard to its actual prolificness: so exactly does the principle of population manifest itself, even in its very exceptions, when such are duly examined. The other State, Georgia, it is well known, is similarly circumstanced with Maine, though not in a like degree.

(11) But to obviate the necessity of attending to these individual cases, I shall collect the whole of the decisive facts which the foregoing tables present, and place them at once before the reader. Since the commencement of this century, the rule of increase, then, in America, according to the three last official censuses, has been thus. There have been to every hundred females from sixteen to forty-five years of age, the following proportion of children under ten. Where the inhabitants to the square mile have been,

under 5 (of which there have been 20 instances) 216 children. from 5 to 10

7

200

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(12) It is not in my power still further to illustrate the principle by an appeal to the subdivisions of the States, as has already been done in reference to those of one of the counties of England. Nor is it in the least necessary so to do. I may, however, just refer to the New England States of the Union, distinct from the

1 Warden, Statistical Account of the United States, vol. i., p. 350.

others; as in these the inhabitants are supposed to be more stationary, and are certainly of more uniform habits, than in the rest of those composing the Confederation. They corroborate the principle at issue thus minutely :

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(13) Such are the facts contained in the censuses of America, the very country and the identical documents which have been long supposed to demonstrate the principle of population, which it is the main purpose of this treatise to refute. They utterly subvert that theory by shewing, most indubitably, not merely the fallacy-the impossibility of a geometric ratio of human increase in the United States, independent of foreign accessions; but they demonstrate, at the same time, the existence of the true law of population, and exhibit it in constant operation, where, were it not a principle inherent in Nature, no imaginable reason could be assigned why it should have the least influence. I might also shew that the actual increase in the different divisions of that great confederation fol lows in the same order as their respective prolificness; but it is unnecessary to prolong this part of an argument, which, I think, would be deemed final and conclusive were it founded solely on the statistics of the United States of America.

447

CHAPTER XIII.

OF THE LAW OF POPULATION, AS PROVED BY THE CENSUSES OF THE KINGDOM OF THE NETHERLANDS.

(1) THE censuses of the kingdom of the Netherlands, as recently published, may be said to embody the main exceptions from the principle of population now promulgated. They will, however, on due examination, be found merely to concentrate those modifications of it which, as previously shewn, resolve themselves into the general rule; exhibiting it in those adaptations which constitute it in all situations, and under all circumstances, a law of uniform and universal beneficence.

(2) It has been already said, that the prolificness of human beings is regulated by the degree of their accumulation, but with a further reference to the nature of the space they occupy. Hence, the kingdom of the Netherlands, consisting, as it does, of a country almost unparalleled in the equability and present fertility of its surface, ought, on a comparison with other countries not possessed of similar advantages, to be eminently prolific; and such appears to be the fact. It has also been stated, that the measure of human fecundity has a direct relation to that of the mortality which prevails in any particular district or country; and the nature and necessity of this regulation, also, is most apparent; as without it the very same degree of fruitfulness might consign one nation to an actual surcharge of inhabitants, and another to inevitable desolation. The country now under considera

tion is remarkable for exhibiting a variation in the ratio of mortality in its different provinces, perhaps wholly unequalled elsewhere, the extremes being as wide as from 1 death in 31 of the inhabitants, to 1 in about 58; which variation, as has been already mentioned, one of the ablest of its statistical authorities has observed, is coincident with that of the prolificness of the same provinces1.

(3) It is plain, therefore, that, independently of the difference in those moral causes which, more or less, influence the question, and which exist in the Pays-Bas in their widest extremes, the variations in the physical condition of the population are such as to require a computation of considerable complexity, in order to satisfy the conditions of this highly-important problem. And the attempt, moreover, is rendered still more difficult, though I hope not insuperable, by the known inaccuracies of the official documents; the census being composed of enumerations conducted at various periods and, indeed, under different governments, and, as it seems, supplemented by a series of mere approximations. Imperfect, however, as are these documents, I think, we may deduce from them a striking proof of the true principle of population, and the more important, as shewing that it still pursues and secures its ultimate design, even by means of apparent exceptions from its own general laws. The following facts are taken, principally, from Quetelet.

1

Quetelet, Recherches Statistiques sur les Pays-Bas, p. 49.

2 See M. Quetelet, Recherches sur la

Population, &c., pp. 2, 3. And Recherches Statistiques, pp. 4, 5, by the same Author.

TABLE LXXVII.

DEMONSTRATING THE LAW OF POPULATION FROM THE CENSUSES

OF THE KINGdom of the Netherlands.

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