L/HAP. V. 



Civilised Nations. 



*39 



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

 " and during the first five years of life the town death-rate is 

 " almost exactly double that of the rural districts." As these re- 

 turns include both the rich and the poor, no doubt more than 

 twice the number of births would be requisite to keep up the 

 number of the very poor inhabitants 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 

 f< of the same number of the unmarried." The mortality, also, 

 of husbands under twenty is " excessively high," 22 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, U - 3 

 annually died, whilst of the married only 65 died. 23 A similar 

 law was proved to hold good, during the years 1803 and 1864, 

 with the entire population above the age of twenty in Scotland : 

 for instance, out of every 1000 unmarried men, between the ages 

 of twenty and thirty, 14V97 annually died, whilst of the married 

 only 7*24 died, that is less than half. 24 Dr. Stark remarks on 

 this, ••' Bachelorhood is more destructive to life than the most 

 " unwholesome trades, or than residence in an unwholesome 

 " house or district where there has never been the most distant 

 " attempt at sanitary improvement." He considers that the 

 lessened mortality is the direct result of " marriage, and the 

 " more regular domestic habits which attend that state." He 

 admits, however, that the intemperate, profligate, and criminal 

 classes, whose duration of life is low, do not commonly marry ; 

 and it must likewise be admitted that men with a weak constitu- 



28 These quotations are taken 

 from our highest authority on such 

 questions, namely, Dr. Farr, in his 

 paper 'On the Influence of Mar- 

 riage on the Mortality of the French 

 People,' read before the Nat. Assoc. 

 for the Promotion of Social Science, 

 1858. 



23 Dr. Farr, ibid. The quota- 

 tions given below are extracted 



from the^same striking paper. 



24 1 have taken the mean of the 

 quinquennial means, given in ' The 

 Tenth Annual Report of Births, 

 Deaths, &.c, in Scot hind, ' 1867. 

 The quotation from Dr. Stark is 

 copied from an article iu the ' Daily 

 News,' Oct. 17th, 1868, which Dr. 

 Farr considers very carefully writ« 

 ten. 



