ing facts from three tables, pages 25, 26, 27, 31, 32, 33, 52, 53, and 54, in the 12th volume of the Bulletin des Sciences Géographiques, &c.; which were, of course, calculated with no view whatever to the present argument, and consequently free from the suspicion of having been managed so as to support it. The first column of figures gives the proportion of marriages in each of the departments of France; the second, their average prolificness; and the third, the proportion of deaths. I have to observe, that, in the first column, the annual proportion of the marriages is calculated on a radix of one hundred thousand inhabitants; in the second is given the average number of births to each marriage; and in the third, the annual number of the deaths to every thousand of the population. The difference in these radixes is occasioned by the results being taken from different tables, though all were calculated from facts belonging to the same period. This table will be accompanied by no remarks, as none are required, the facts it presents shewing, in the most regular and decisive manner throughout, that, instead of the preventive check diminishing the prolificness of marriages according to the doctrine so much relied upon by our anti-populationists, on the contrary, in proportion as it prevails, does that prolificness gradually increase.

TABLE XCV.

DISPROVING THAT IN FRANCE THE PREVENTIVE CHECK DIMINISHES THE FECUNDITY OF MARRIAGES, OR THAT THE NUMBER OF THE LATTER IS REGULATED BY THE PREVAILING DEGREE OF MORTALITY.

(8) The following table is collected from the results already presented in detail in the ninth chapter of this book, relative to the same country; and as the computation is formed on a different principle, and embraces a somewhat different period, extending to five years, it will give an additional, though it is conceived, an unnecessary, corroboration of the principle in question.