72 Mr W. Frascr on the History and Const'itntion of 



trates of the numbers of the people, which the governors of the different pro- 

 vinces are required to state to the commissioners appointed for these purposes. 

 The extracts from the registers are made and transmitted annually, but the 

 enumerations only once in three years. Printed forms, with proper blanks, 

 distinguishing the ages and sexes, both of the living and the dead, with the dis- 

 eases the deaths were occasioned by, are distributed throughout the country 

 to enable the people to make these returns correctly and uniformly ; and the 

 information thus acquired, respecting the state of population and mortality, is 

 much more correct and satisfactory than what has been obtained in any other 

 place of considerable extent."* 



The first table of mortality was constructed by Dr Halley from the regis- 

 ter kept atBreslaw for the five years ending with 1691 ; and Mr William Kersse- 

 boom of the Hague, published a tract in 1742, in which he gave a table of 

 mortality formed from registers, kept for nearly 130 years, of many thousand 

 life annuitants in Holland and West Friesland. JNIr Nicholas Struyck also 

 published at Amsterdam, about the same time, two tables of mortality from 

 registers of annuitants kept there for about 35 years, — one of these tables 

 shewing the mortality of females, and the other that of males, but both, when 

 combined, agreeing very nearly with the table of Dr Halley. In 1742, like- 

 wise, Mr Thomas Simpson gave a table of mortality for liondon ; and in 174G, 

 M. Deparcieux published an essay at Paris, in which he inserted six ne»v and 

 valuable tables of mortality, one of them constructed from the lists of the no- 

 minees of the French Tontines, principally for the years 1G89 and 1696, and 

 the others from the mortuary registers of various religious houses in France. 

 Four of these shewed the mortality of the monks of different orders, and the 

 fifth that among the nuns of different convents in Paris. Dr Price, in the 

 first edition of his Observations on Reversionary Payments, published in 1771? 

 gave three new tables of mortality, constructed from the London, Norwich, 

 and Northampton bills ; and in his second edition in 1772, five other tables, 

 likewise new, for various places on the Continent and in England. In his 

 fourth edition, which appeared in 1783, he gave some other new tables of mor- 

 tality, for Warrington and Chester ; likewise for all Sweden and Finland, and 

 for Stockholm separately, in which the sexes were distinguished These latter 

 tables for Sweden and Finland, were the first which had been constructed 

 from data that could be relied on, being enumerations made at seven different pe- 

 riods, of the living, and registers of the annual deaths, in each interval of age, 

 among the whole population for 21 years ending 1776, (Stockholm excepted, it 

 being for 9 years only) and the materials for which had been communicated to 

 him by M. Wargentin, one of the Commissioners of the Tabelvarket. In 1806 

 M. Duvillard published a work at Paris on the Influence of the Small Pox 

 on Human Mortality, in which he gave a table of mortality for France, found- 

 ed on observations made from extensive materials collected previous to the 

 French Ilevolution. Mr Joshua Milne, in his Treatise on Annuities and Insu- 

 rance, published in 1815, likewise gave two new Swedish Tables of mortality, 

 exhibiting that of the sexes both separately and together, and deduced from 

 the Swedish observations for the 25 years ending with 1795. He also furnished 

 a table constructed from very accurate observations made at Carlisle upon 

 a mean number of 8177 persons of various ages, ranks, and conditions, by Dr 

 Heysham, who, for the 9 years from 1779 to 1787, carefully preserved the bills 

 of mortality of that city, supplied their deficiencies, and kept correct accounts 

 of two enumerations of the people, in which their ages were taken. And, last- 

 ly, Mr Milne gave another table of mortality from the Swedish Observations 

 for the 5 years ending in 1805, in his article on the Law of Human Mortality 

 inserted in the volume of the Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica pub- 

 lished in 1824. 



Such were the principal tables of mortality up to this latter date ; but the 

 one which had been for a long period almost uniformly relied on for practi- 

 cal purposes in this country, was that denominated the Northampton Table, 

 constructed by Dr Price from the mortuary registers of that town for 46 

 years ending with 1 780. A pretty general opinion, however, had for many years 

 prevailed, that this table exhibited the rate of mortality much higher than what 



♦ Supplement to Encyclopaedia Britannica, art. Bills of Mobtalitv. 



