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have to make from the numerous advantages of civilization and commerce, I shall endeavour to investigate its extent with some precision. The number of births produced by each marriage must of course be various in different situations; but there is good reason to believe, that the average of four to a marriage in towns, and six in the country, may not be far from the truth. Now, as half the number born in towns dies in childhood, each married couple must of course lose two children on an average. In the country, where it has been fully proved that the majority of the numbers born live to be married, we will calculate the number of those who die in childhood at one third; for the waste of life among persons who are just adult is very small in the country. But as each married couple here produces six births upon an average, if one-third die in childhood, the loss they sustain is of two children each, as we have seen to be the case in towns; so that the average pressure of grief upon each married couple is in quantity precisely the same, and the difference between them appears to be in the proportion which the loss of each bears to their whole stock, which in the townsman's case is one half, in the countryman's one third. The loss is in the same proportion as if two men, one possessing an income of 4000l. and the other of 60001. a year, should each be deprived of 2000l. a year. On the face of this account there certainly is a comparative disadvantage on the side of the townsman; but if we consider that both the contract of marriage and the residence in the town are voluntary on the part of the parents suffering the loss, as well as the numerous advantages and enjoyments by which they are tempted to place themselves in that si

tuation, their whole lot may well bear a comparison with that of the country residents. That such is the opinion of the people themselves is evident from the eagerness with which every situation in great towns is sought after by the residents in the country, and from the infrequency of the opposite course of conduct. We may, therefore, fairly conclude that the general increase of misery is not very great, if any at all. Nay, we think, that we may fairly assume that there is upon the whole an increase of happiness, particularly when we consider the superior capacity for enjoyment which the townsman's mental improvement gives him, and the superior means of attaining it afforded by the higher remuneration of

his labour.

It remains to inquire how far the abatement in the progress of population which is incident to the existence of towns is caused by an increase of the vice of which they are said to be the hot-beds. Upon this subject there are some curious facts to be found among the writers who have turned their attention to it. I have selected the two following; the first of which is highly honourable to the sect upon whose society the experiment was founded. It struck Dr. Perceval, (see Perceval's Essays on Population, p. 41. Ed. 1776.) that the principles and manners of the Society of Friends, though often made the subjects of illiberal censure and ridicule, might afford them advantages over other bodies of men, with respect to the duration of life. The diligence, cleanliness, temperance, and composure of mind by which the members of this society are distinguished, in towns as well as in the country, might reasonably be supposed to contribute to health and longevity; and as

there are no persons among them in abject poverty, and few immoderately rich, this more equal distribution must lessen the sources of disease, and furnish every individual under it with the necessary means of relief. These considerations excited his curiosity to know the proportion of deaths among the Quakers of Manchester; and he was gratified by Mr. Routh, one of the Friends, in the most obliging manner, with the following information. The society consisted of 81 males and 84 females, 54 married persons, nine widowers, seven widows, and 48 persons under 15 years of age.

The births during the preceding seven years had amounted to 34, and the burials to 47; about 1 therefore in 24 of the Quakers in Manchester died annually; whereas the proportion of deaths among the inhabitants of the town at large was as 1 to 28. This difference, which is directly the reverse of what would occur were vice and intemperance the only causes of mortality in towns, Dr. Perceval afterwards reduces to a level, by supposing, that the Quakers had few or no accessions to their number by new settlers or converts during the seven years. This must have considerably increased their proportional mortality; because, as new settlers generally arrive in towns in an adult state, and the chief mortality takes place in childhood, they must of course raise the proportion of inhabitants to the deaths, and also of births and weddings to the burials, higher than they would otherwise be. If this cause did not exist, he conceives, that the general proportion of deaths to the population in Manchester would be at least as high as among the Quakers, perhaps some

thing higher; but it cannot be denied, that the proportional mortality among these last is naturally very near as high as among the other residents of the town, notwithstanding the difference in the temperance, regularity, and cleanliness of the parties. That "the want of vivacity in the people of this sect," and "the sedentary lives of their females," tend materially to shorten the period of their existence, will not probably be admitted by any philosopher or physician. What then remains but that we come to the conclusion, that the causes which shorten the period of human life in towns, however they may be sometimes aggravated by vice, are fully sufficient, without any such aggravation, to produce all the effect contended for in this treatise, and to render the inhabitants of towns, supposing that they conducted themselves as temperately and as virtuously as the Quakers, a non-reproductive part of the population of the state. Dr. Perceval (see Perceval's Essays on Population, p. 56) has afforded another fact to prove that the quantity of vice usually existing in towns does not materially alter the otherwise natural rate of the progress of population. By a careful comparison of the difference in the proportion of deaths between the town of Manchester and the villages immediately surrounding, he found that the yearly mortality in the former bore a proportion to the whole population, very nearly, if not quite, double to that in the latter;-yet "both live in the same climate, carry on the same manufactures, are chiefly supplied from the same market," and their habits of life, their morals, and their manners, cannot therefore be very different. Supposing the fact as

established by the Quakers to be out of the question, there can probably be no difference of vice in these two situations sufficient to account for their different rates of mortality; and the two facts taken together render it absolutely certain that such is not the cause. We must evidently, therefore, have recourse to the other circumstances in which towns differ from the country; and these are chiefly, confinement from such exercises as render the body vigorous and robust; an atmosphere unfavourable to the duration of life; and the weaker spark which originally animates the frame of the townsman, and which refuses to carry his existence to the same extended period as the more vivid fire which glows in the frame of the countryman.

Some of these circumstances are caused, and all of them are compensated, by the superior degree of mental exertion necessary to the townsman, that cannot fail to impart to him a portion of refined enjoyment to which the peasant must be a total stranger. Nor has he ever felt the want of the more efficient properties of the body. Although he is born an animal less vigorous than the peasant, his native air affords him a state of personal feeling as comfortable, fits him as much for the less hardy and laborious occupations in which he is employed, renders him as free from pain and as capable of the quiet enjoyments suited to his station, as the air of the country affords to the rough peasant flushed with the boisterous amusement of athletic exercises.

I am aware that it has been the custom among a set of philosophers, who are too little scrupulous conconcerning the effects of their sophistry upon the public good, to decry the effects of civilization, and

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