Chap. V. CIVILISED NATIONS. 175 



from a high rate of mortality, and the extremely pro- 

 fligate leave few offspring. The poorest classes crowd 

 into towns, and it has been proved by Dr. Stark from 

 the statistics of ten years in Scotland, 20 that at all ages 

 the death-rate is higher in towns than in rural districts, 

 " and during the first five years of life the town cleath- 

 " rate is almost exactly double that of the rural districts." 

 As these returns include both the rich and the poor, no 

 doubt more than double the number of births would be 

 requisite to keep up the number of the very poor inha- 

 bitants in the towns, relatively to those in the country. 

 With women, marriage at too early an age is highly 

 injurious ; for it has been found in France that, " twice 

 " as many wives under twenty die in the year, as died out 

 " of the same number of the unmarried." The mortality, 

 also, of husbands under twenty is " excessively high," 21 

 but what the cause of this may be seems doubtful. 

 Lastly, if the men who prudently delay marrying until 

 they can bring up their families in comfort, were to 

 select, as they often do, women in the prime of life, the 

 rate of increase in the better class would be only slightly 

 lessened. 



It was established from an enormous body of statistics, 

 taken during 1853, that the unmarried men throughout 

 France, between the ages of twenty and eighty, die in a 

 much larger proportion than the married : for instance, 

 out of every 1000 unmarried men, between the ages of 

 twenty and thirty, 11*3 annually died, whilst of the 

 married only 6*5 died. 22 A similar law was proved to 



20 ' Tenth Annual Report of Births, Deaths, &c., in Scotland,' 1867, 

 p. xxix. 



21 These quotations are taken from our highest authority on such 

 questions, namely, Dr. Farr, in his paper " On the Influence of Marriage 

 on the Mortality of the French People," read before the Nat. Assoc. 

 for the Promotion of Social Science, 1858. 



22 Dr. Farr, ibid. The quotations given below are extracted from 

 the same striking paper. 



