has frequently been observed, how nearly the number of deaths in each
year has approximated, but we have this year to notice a considerable
diminution in the annual return. We are not disposed, however, to
attribute the diminished numbers, chiefly to any special cause connected
with health, but consider it rather as one of those fluctuations which
are ever found to arise in a series of years, in the mortality of a small
community. The number of the dying, however, may be expected to bear, as
respects the average, a pretty uniform relation to the number of the
living. And if the fact be, as all our late inquiries lead us to believe
it is, that we are, though slowly, a diminishing body, we must expect
that our average number of deaths will also be found gradually to
diminish.

We have often anxiously pondered over the question,--Why the Society of
Friends should be a diminishing body? And we propose to give in this
place a few of the thoughts which have been suggested to us in the course
of our consideration.

In the first place, let us notice the natural causes which tend to the
decrease of our Society. We have formerly shown that the mortality among
our members is less than in the community at large, which so far as it
extends, is of course a reason for the increase rather than the
diminution of our numbers. But then we have, on the other side, the well-
ascertained fact, that whilst in the community at large, the registered
births exceed the deaths, by 45 per cent; in the Society of Friends, the
registered deaths actually exceed the births! The cause of this fact is
to be found, not only in connection with the number who marry out of the
Society, but also in the operation of that prudential check on entering
into the married state, which will always prevail amongst a moral people,
where the means of subsistence cannot easily and with certainty be