170 Mr. Henry on the Bills of Mortality 



The number in the fornner period is as 1.7 to 

 9.3 J whereas that in the latter is only as 1.5 to 

 1 1.5, of the whole number of regiftered fu- 

 nerals. 



But injurious as large towns may be to the 

 duration of life, and though it mull be granted 

 that by annually draining the country of a num- 

 ber of inhabitants, they confume many lives, 

 which, in their original fituation, might have 

 continued to exift for feveral years longer, but 

 are cut off by difeafes produced by vitiated air, 

 by infedion, or by a change in their modes of 

 living, yet on the whole, they are not, perhaps, 

 fo unfavourable to population as they may, at firft 

 fight, appear. For in large towns, at lead in 

 thofe where extenfive manufactures are carried 

 on, the encouragements to matrimony are con- 

 fiderable; and, therefore, if life be more fpeedily 

 wafted, it is, probably, produced in a far greater 

 ratio*. A fenfible, induftrious manufacturer 

 confiders his children as his treafure, and boafts 

 that his quiver is full of them; for where chil- 

 dren can be employed at an early age, the fear 

 of a large family is not only diminilhed, but 



* That this is aftually the cafe in Mancheftei and Sal- 

 ford appears from the regifters, although during a period 

 of twenty-one years the marriages and births have been 

 more than doubled, yet the increafe of burials is only as 

 29 to 16. 



every 



