EARLY STATISTICS.--CHART, KENT.

(No. 21. p. 329.)

The Registrar-General, in his Eighth Report, enters at length into the
causes which have brought about the variations in the number of
marriages, and consequently, as I need scarcely say, of births. In
comparing the marriage returns since 1754, which are given in the
report, with the history of events since that period, he certainly makes
it clear, to use his own words, that "The marriage returns in England
point out periods of prosperity little less distinctly than the funds
measure the hopes and fears of the money-market." (p. 26. 8vo. edit.)

And that

"The great fluctuations in the marriages of England are the
results of peace after war, abundance after dearth, high wages
after want of employment, speculation after languid enterprise,
confidence after distrust, national triumphs after national
disasters." (p. 27.)

During the civil wars, the diminishing influences indicated in the
reverse of this statement were at work with an intensity unequalled in
any other period of our modern history, so that there can be no doubt
that our then "unhappy divisions" did most materially retard the
numerical increase of the population, as well as the progress of science
and the useful arts. Such is the inevitable consequence of war: of civil
war in a tenfold degree. And our parish register books, all of which I
doubt not show similar facts, place this in the most unfavourable light;
for, through the spread of nonconformity, the unsettled state of the