430 Sir James Mackintosh's Account of [Dec. 



liable to considerable errors of negligence and incorrectness, 

 though exempt from those of intentional falsehood. 



The average deaths during the year would, by this account, 

 be 9000; but the year 1804, in which the deaths are nearly 

 trebled, was a season of famine throughout the neighbouring 

 provinces on the continent of India. Great multitudes sought 

 refuge from death at Bombay ; but many of them arrived in too 

 exhausted a state to be saved by the utmost exertions of huma- 

 nity and skill. This calamity began to affect the mortality in 

 1803, and its effects are visible in the deaths of 1805. 



No. II. is an account of the Mussulman population; distin- 

 guishing the sexes, and conveying some information respecting 

 their age, occupation, and domestic condition. This document 

 and that which follows are the more important, because we have 

 only conjectural estimates of the whole population of the island, 

 which vary from 160,000 to 180,000 souls. By comparing the 

 Mahometan deaths, on an average for the three years 1806, 1807, 

 and 1808, as collected from No. I. with the whole number of 

 Mahometans in this account, the deaths of the members of that 

 sect appear to be to their whole numbers as 1 to 17-^. 



No. HI. is an account of the total number of Parsee inhabi- 

 tants, distinguishing sexes and ages. From the same compari- 

 son as that stated in No. II. it appears that the deaths of the 

 Parsees are nearly as 1 to 24. 



Nos. IV. V. VI. and VII. contain accounts of population, 

 births, and deaths, of native Christians, from four of the parishes 

 into which the island is divided. Their baptismal registers 

 furnish an account of the number of births, which we have no 

 easy and precise mode of ascertaining among the other inhabi- 

 tants. Their account of. deaths is also some check on that part 

 of the general register of deaths which relates to them ; and 

 their returns of the population are a further aid towards the 

 formation of a general rate of mortality. In No. IV. the births 

 are to the population as 1 to 28, the deaths as 1 to 20. In No. V. 

 the births as 1 to 20, deaths as 1 to 16. In No. VI. births 

 1 to 30, deaths 1 to 15. In No. VII. births 1 to 43, deaths 1 

 to 22. 



These proportions of births and deaths to population differ 

 very considerably from each other, and some of them deviate 

 Avidely from the result of the like inquiries in most other places. 

 It is not easy to determine how far inaccuracy may have contri- 

 buted to this deviation. The education of the native Roman 

 Catholic clergy of Bombay is almost exclusively confined to 

 monastic theology and ethics ; even their respectable European 

 superiors are fully occupied by their ecclesiastical duties, and 

 are little accustomed to political arithmetic. On the other hand 

 it must be remembered, that at Bombay, a population of 150,000 

 souls is confined to an island which is only eight miles in length 

 and three miles in its utmost breadth. Such a population with 



