cent., consequently rendering it unnecessary to bring any proofs that their present population, any more than their recent foundation, has been owing almost exclusively to emigration, there we find the class of both sexes above forty-five, little more than one-fourth of the number contained in that under ten years of age; whereas, in the four first-mentioned old States, the same proportion was more than double, namely, threefifths. The female sex, again, has, in those States a lessening proportion compared with the males. Lastly, in Indiana, which has above quintupled its numbers in ten years, there the children under ten are nearly five times the number of the adults of forty-five and upwards, being above three times the proportion that exists in England. The females are still relatively fewer, being only as 901 to 1000 males. Indeed, in some of the yet more recent territories, the same proportion is as little as nearly one-half and threefourths only of females to males.

(7) Such, then, are the effects which reason taught us to expect, and which facts fully confirm, produced by emigration upon the population of the United States, as evidenced by the censuses, and which, operating on so great a mass of inhabitants, must be vast indeed to have produced results so striking. The deduction is as clear as the facts are undeniably true; and both contradict any hypothesis founded upon the supposition, that America doubles its people by procreation only. To build a demonstration on such a basis, is to impute to Nature a series of irregularities on the most extended scale of her operations, of which she is never guilty, even in the minutest and most trivial of her works.

(8) It is, I conceive, unnecessary to reinforce the preceding proofs; I cannot, however, refrain from

VOL. I.

2 N

shewing, that the very same effects result from a similar cause in our own island. In those districts to which numerous accessions of inhabitants continually repair, the discriminated census of the country exhibits (as it must of necessity do) a deficiency in the relative number of the inhabitants at the later periods of life, and for the reasons previously stated. Thus, adverting to the table in the fifteenth page of the introductory remarks prefixed to the last census, and taking the counties as alphabetically arranged, I find Leicestershire and Lancashire placed together; the latter, compared with the former county, having a vastly greater number of distant accessions added to its population. On examining the census, as divided into ages, I find, however, the town of Manchester is omitted, and, consequently, in such a comparison, the argument loses one of its chief supports. Nevertheless, in every 20,000 of the inhabitants, there are, in Lancashire, 6063 under ten years of age, in Leicestershire 5512; but, adverting to the proportions of the class at fifty years old and upwards, the former gives 2239 only, the latter 2903. Lancashire increased, during the ten years preceding the last census, 25 per cent.; Leicestershire 15 only. It is quite clear, that the increase in the former county, any more than that in America, was not from procreation only.

(9) But to take a last illustration from one and the same county. The censuses of the Hundred of Lonsdale, north of the Sands, and of the Hundred of Salford, exclusive of Manchester, present these facts when similarly compared. The Hundred of Salford increased, with great rapidity, up to 1820; and, it is needless to add, by constant migrations, from the agricultural parts of the country, and of both sexes; for

in this last respect the analogy, for obvious reasons, fails. In this Hundred there are, in every 20,000 of the population, 6063 children under ten years of age, and 1984 individuals of fifty and upwards; whereas, in the Hundred of Lonsdale, north of the Sands, there are only 5649 of the former age, but the number in the latter division amounts to 3147. Precisely the same facts will appear in the census of any country or district where the population is partly adventitious; and they will be regulated, as to their extent, by the number of such accessions. It is true, that an hypothesis might be formed, in order to prove that the population of the emporium of the cotton manufacture proceeded from procreation only, but it would not only contradict all experience, but the other facts contained likewise in the census of the two several hundreds; for, in that of Lonsdale, north of the Sands, notwithstanding its slower increase, the mortality is smaller, and the prolificness greater, than in the Hundred of Salford. Such an hypothesis, however, would be quite as conclusive as the one which, in spite of facts as universally known, and as undeniably proved, attributes the increase of the population of America to the like source only. But, it is hoped that such an attempt will no longer be persisted in; nor needs the present argument be pursued. The supposed proofs of the geometric theory of human increase, as founded on the American censuses, have not only negatived all such suppositions, but have fully demonstrated the existence and prevalence of emigration as one of the most powerful and efficient of the causes which have distributed the numbers, in the divisions of those documents, in a manner so different from what prevails in all other countries where the population advances by natural generation only.

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CHAPTER XII.

OF EMIGRATION TO NORTH AMERICA: PROVED BY THE BILLS OF MORTALITY OF THAT COUNTRY.

(1) I SHALL Conclude these proofs, founded on the documents America itself furnishes, of the extent of emigration, by an appeal to the bills of mortality, which have, from time to time, been published there. These present to us certain facts of the most uniform and striking character, which place the theorists who deduce, from the increase of the population there, their geometric ratio, in a dilemma whence, I conceive, there is no escape; namely, either that the mortality in that country, at the prime of life, or, in other words, at the prolific period of existence, is far greater than in any other in the civilized world, or, otherwise, that it is increased at that particular period by a large and perpetual accession of foreign emigration. These conclusions are equally fatal to their entire argument. I hope, for the sake of suffering humanity, the former cannot be adopted as the true one; in proceeding to shew that the latter ought to be received, this appeal to the registers of the mortality must necessarily give the discussion a gloomy character: it will, however, serve to strengthen the whole argument, as the last shades which the painter throws in, give truth and effect to a faithful likeness.

(2) The fact on which this branch of the argument is founded shall be stated in the words of Dr. Price. He says, "the period of life at which settlers

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remove, will appear in the bills by an increase in "the number of deaths at that period;" he adds also, " and beyond it'." If he means, by "beyond it," the more advanced ages, he has so far mistaken the effect of emigration, as has been already shewn in the last chapter; but from what he afterwards says, I think he uses the word "beyond" in an opposite sense?. Dr. Black is more precise, and perfectly accurate; speaking of these accessions to the capital, he says,

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one reason for the great surge in the London bills of "mortality, from 20 to 40, is, that within that inter"val of life, the majority of new settlers, or recruits, "arrive, and consequently augment the burials of the metropolis, from 20 to 40, beyond their natural "proportion3." He does not go on to say and "beyond" that period, in as much as he saw that such accessions must have had a contrary effect, because the "new settlers" at the ages mentioned, formed a part of the prolific class, and must have had, at least, their full proportion of children, who would, of course, yield an equal quota of mortality to their bills, whereas the parents of the new settlers not removing with them, but dying elsewhere, would not be included therein. Hence at the period of life during which emigration prevails, (the law of mortality remaining the same,) the bills will exhibit an increase in the deaths, proportioned to its extent; after that term, a corresponding diminution. I will merely add, that Dr. Price says, and I think justly, that there will appear, under such circumstances, a small relative proportion of deaths at the period of life immediately preceding that at which this emigration commences; which he mentions that he had invariably remarked in

1 Price, Revers. Payments, vol. i, p. 330.

2

Ibid., p.

337.

Black, Med. Analysis, p. 21.