278 M. Chaieauneui on the Changes of the 



these classes lose fewer at the present day, it is because they are 

 in a better state for taking care of them, and bringing them up.* 



20. Nor is it less evident also, that if these same causes, as 

 well as some others, had not extended their influence beyond 

 the years of childhood, they would only have had the melan- 

 choly advantage of delivering over to death a greater number 

 of victims in the stages which follow. The contrary, however, 

 takes place, and at the present day more individuals attain the 

 fiftieth and sixtieth year than formerly. The action of these 

 preserving causes of childhood must therefore continue to ope- 

 rate upon the grown up person during the remaining part of 

 his career; and these preserving causes are in our eyes, to 

 sum them up into one which contains them all, an improved 

 state of society, a more diifused civilization, from whence results 

 a more happy and easy existence. 



21. Along with the fact of the diminution of the number of 

 deaths, we have to place a second, which equally results from 

 the comparison of the true epochs, namely that of the diminu- 

 tion of marriages. They were formerly in the proportion of 

 one in a hundred and ten individuals ; they are now in that of 

 one to a hundred and twenty-three. This, which is a mean 

 term, is even too high for some countries. In France, where, 

 according to the calculations of Necker, there was one marriage 

 in a hundred and eleven individuals, there is only reckoned one 

 in a hundred and thirty-five. 



2^. The natural consequence of the diminution of marriages 

 i^ that of births. This diminution is always proportional to the 

 increase of the population ; for while the proportion of mar- 

 riages to it has fallen from a hundred and ten to a hundred and 

 twenty-three, and that of births from twenty-eight to thirty, it 

 is yet remarked that the one and the other are augmented in a 

 certain degree. 



• Mr Glenily, who has been much occupied in England with statistics, 

 coh9idei*ed with relation to insurance societies, thinks, that since the time of 

 Dr Price, the public health is improved in children, and very little in grown 

 up persons. He estimates, that in the course of the last twenty-five years, 

 the mean, term of the duration of the life of children has been increased a 

 fiftieth part.— JBn/w^ Review, Number for November 1825, p. 168. 



