Report of Statistical Section, 257 



yet the general mode of Registration is so incomplete, especiallj in 

 regard to the localities in which the deaths take place, the trades and 

 professions of the parties who die, as well as in the great majority of 

 the diseases which cause death, that no satisfactory information can be 

 obtained from them as to the eflfects produced on human life by the 

 vicissitudes of the climate, in connection with the trades and profes- 

 sions of the people, and the existing state of the different localities 

 of large towns. 



The Registers of Births in this country are so very incomplete that 

 they are of no value to the statist for any calculations relative to the 

 duration of life, or for tracing in a satisfactory and decisive manner 

 the propinquity of families. 



The law of Scotland, as it now stands, relative to the proclama- 

 tions of marriages, when properly adhered to, is well adapted for 

 enabling us to ascertain the amount of resident regular marriages in 

 each parish, yet the system of recording these marriages is very 

 defective. The ages at which the parties marry cannot be obtained 

 from them, and many other particulars which would enable us to 

 arrive at correct conclusions as to the proportionate amount of mar- 

 riages which take place among the various classes of the community, 

 and other important particulars, are altogether omitted in these records. 



As it is well known that the greatness of a country depends on the 

 general well-being of its population, it must ever be one of the first 

 objects of study on the part of an enlightened nation, to introduce 

 such laws as may tend to improve the social condition of the people ; 

 and as the science of vital statistics has for its object the discovery 

 of those laws by which nature regulates the amount of disease and 

 death, under every variety of circumstances, as well as " the discovery 

 of those truths which tend to the comfort and happiness of the people," 

 it is to be hoped that the energy with which this study has lately been 

 followed out, especially in England, will soon cause it to hold a still 

 higher place among the great branches of human knowledge than it 

 has hitherto done, and that the benefits of a better system for the 

 Registration of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, will speedily be 

 extended to Scotland. 



Several attempts have been made to introduce a legislative measure 

 for the improvement of these Registers in Scotland without success, 

 owing, in the last instance, as we have been informed, to the opposi- 

 tion offered to it by such as considered their own interests affected 

 by the measure proposed, and to the apparent indifference of those 

 who, it was understood, ought to have been more alive to the import- 

 ance of the measure. "Within these few years a number of petitions 

 have been presented to Government with the view of urging forward 

 a legislative measure of this description for Scotland, similar to that 

 now in force for England. It has been thought, however, that should 

 a revisal of the Poor Law of this country take place, which is shortly 



