— 
TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. lil 
The metropolitan and the southern agricultural and maritime counties, which are 
two out of the three of highest instruction, are the only two in which improvident 
matriages, or those of men under twenty-one and illegitimacy, are both under the 
average. In every other, the deficiency of the one ill feature is just counterbalanced 
by the prevalence of the other, except in the case of the great central mining and 
manufacturing region, which has an unhappy excess of both. I have given the ille- 
gitimacy at two different periods, and from two distinct authorities, because they ma- 
terially disagree in one particular: namely, the extent to which this unhappy feature 
of society prevails among the Celtic populations of the west; in which respect I 
incline to agree with the older authority, because of its greater claim to accuracy in 
regard to this one point. It is, I think, only the omission of a large number from this 
district which makes the south midland agricultural and manufacturing counties just 
above the average in the more recent statement, though it will not account for all the 
relative increase of illegitimacy in the south midland and eastern agricultural counties. 
In the pauperism columns, the balance is just against ignorance, but averages of 
this date show merely the usual state of things in a time of manufacturing prosperity, 
when every one in the manufacturing regions that can and will work is employed ; 
and all wanting employment in the neighbouring agricultural districts are easily 
drafted off; while the more southern, distant, and purely agricultural regions are 
still oppressed by nearly their usual excess of people upon the rates, even in the case 
of those counties which have some little of manufactures intermingled with their 
Mea for they are of such a nature as inevitably to encourage a faster increase 
of hands than of trade to employ them. 
With regard to providence, as tested by the accumulations in the savings banks, 
it will be seen that the excess is variously coincident with the superiority of instruction, 
except in the case of the northern agricultural and mining districts, where the amount 
falls just below the average, in proportion to the population, perhaps unusually des 
pressed by the great colliers’ strike, which was at its most desperate shifts at the 
period of the returns. Notwithstanding the high wages of the mass of the population 
in the midland mining and manufacturing regions in all good times, therefore, the 
rate of saving is as low as in the wretched districts of Bucks, Herts, and Bedfordshire. 
_ The lowest amount in savings banks is in Wales. The circuit of deposit for each 
bank will sometimes overstep a county boundary, but averages of the present mag- 
a nitude will not be much diverted from accuracy by such a circumstance ; and indeed 
_ the county boundaries do not generally run near to the towns in which the banks are 
chiefly situated; but when we come to consider the subdivisions of these several 
districts, and especially the counties individually, cases of disturbance from these 
_ causes will be obvious. ‘ 
The columns of committals for criminal offences agree very nearly with those of the 
early marriages ; and after deducting the dispersed populations of the Celtic and 
_ the Scandinavian regions, both remarkably deficient in crime, the Welsh districts 
especially; and the southern agricultural and midland and north-midland agricultural 
counties, which are also on the favourable side of the average, the excess of about 
12 per cent. on the remainder of the population, is pretty nearly distributed through- 
out the rest of the kingdom, except where this proportion is more than doubled in the 
_ wretched south midland agricultural and manufacturing counties; the general result 
against which is very marked. 
These results as completely extinguish our belief in rural innocence, as those 
- already recited undeceive us as to the comparative excess of rural ignorance. A 
relative excess of ignorance, greater concentration of numbers, a low proportion of 
the leisured classes, and employment in dispersed manufactures, appear therefore to 
be the concomitants of the excess of crime everywhere but in the metropolitan coun- 
ties, where its surprisingly small excess, though it may in some degree be owing to 
the preventive character of its superior police, offers a high testimony in favour of 
_ the general conduct of its more instructed population. 
If now we descend one step from these large results, and divide each of these great 
' districts into two portions, according to the greater or less amount of, at least, rudi- 
_ mentary instruction which prevails amongst its inhabitants, we shall find the general 
_ Conclusions at which we have arrived corroborated by the results of this analysis 
_ wherever we apply it. And that the instruction test is the wand to employ for 
effecting this new combination must be obvious, if it be regarded as the best avail- 
