206 Notices respecting New Books. 



suppose our public divided into three classes: the first consisting of 

 those who from personal acquaintance with the author of the Govern- 

 ment Tables have had an opportunity ofascertaining his qualifications 

 for the task of framing them ; the second, those who have read his 

 Report, printed by order of the House of Commons, March 81,1829, 

 and are capable of forming a judgement of the author's fitness from 

 that report ; and the third, those who neither know nor care any thing 

 about such matters. Now we have not the least hesitation in affirming, 

 that the first two of these classes do know the competency of the 

 author to perform his task ; and in confirmation of this assertion, we 

 shall quote an authority which we believe Mr. Edmonds himself will 

 not dispute. In a paper by Mr. Lubbock, in the third volume of the 

 Cambridge Philosophical Transactions, and in p. 330, Mr. Edmonds 

 will find the following passage : " Mr. Finlaison has very recently 

 published extensive tables of mortality, formed from theGovernment 

 tontines and annuitants, which are rendered equally valuable by 

 the accuracy of the materials from which they have been deduced, 

 and the very great care and attention which has been bestowed on 

 them by the author." After this, we apprehend we should only 

 waste the time of our readers by pursuing this subject further. 



We have already expressed our dissent from many of the doctrines 

 and opinions of this author : there are, however, some in which we 

 readih' concur; as those in which we are taught that '^ good ai)- is as 

 necessary to health as good food, " and that "the increase of a popu- 

 lation has a great depende7ice upon the number of women at the child- 

 bearing a<re" and others equally conspicuous for their truth, and 

 their beautiful simplicity, as general laws. 



We must now limit ourselves to a very few more observations. Our 

 author says, p. xxi. " The check on the exertion of the prolific power 

 is scarcity of food." We apprehend his meaning to have been, that 

 scarcity of food abates the prolific power. But let him look to 

 Ireland, with its scanty means of subsistence, and its overflowing 

 population ; and he may also discover, when he sets about observing 

 facts instead of building theories, that the largest families are upon 

 an average produced by the poorest classes. 



We are told, p. xxx. that " the circumstances most favourable to 

 DJto^iVw consist in alternations of privation and saturation :" — to starve 

 one day, and feed to repletion on the next. We, however, seriously 

 recommend our author, and particularly at this time, not to trust 

 his own vitality to such an experiment. 



And in p. viii. we have the comfortable doctrine announced, that 

 " the hopes of an indefinite prolongation of the term of human life 

 have now ceased to be visionary," and this, we presume, without 

 the assistance of the Hermetic philosophy. 



We suspect that "too much learning" has exercised an un- 

 wholesome influence on the mind of our author, who is probably 

 young, with an active and uncurbed imagination, which he has per- 

 mitted on this occasion to hurry him into as many scrapes as the 

 wild steed of Mazcppa did his unwilling rider. But allhougii we 

 have thus amused ourselves, and perhaps our readers, at the author's 

 expense, we can assure him that we do not entertain the slightest un- 



