78 DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH IN ENGLAND 



and Cambridge Colleges, for the impost regularly appears 

 among the disbursements of these corporations, though their in- 

 habitants were migratory. I cannot but think then that some 

 deduction must be made on the ground of persons occupying 

 more tenements than one and for empties. Now in 1861, about 

 one house in twenty, or five per cent, were uninhabited. Again, 

 though many more persons in modern times have more than 

 one house than had them in 1688, there can be no doubt that 

 population is much more densely packed in our days than it 

 was near two centuries ago. Now in the same census of 

 I86I 1 the average of persons to a house is 5.3660. It 

 seems to me certain that in 1688 the average was not above 

 four, and allowing for empty and double holdings, I should 

 incline to put the population at less than 5,000,000 rather 

 than over that amount. 



I have taken Davenant's figures of the houses and hearths 

 in England and Wales, and have calculated the number of 

 acres to each house in the several English counties (Durham 

 and Northumberland being taken together in the original), 

 and the hearths in each county to each house, the first of 

 these being reckoned to two, the second to four places of 

 decimals. Assuming that, generally speaking, the number of 

 persons to a house is the same in all the counties, the average 

 to each house may be taken as a fair index of the distribution 

 of the population and its greater or less density in different 

 parts of England. The density of course is by far the greatest 

 in Middlesex, where the acreage to each house is 1.619. Next 

 comes Surrey, with an acreage of 11.79 acres. Now when we 

 consider how much of this county is waste and even moorland, 

 so high an acreage is evidence that not a little of the wealth 

 of London, possessed by retired merchants, had overflowed 

 into this county. 



On the other hand, Westmorland is the most sparsely peopled 



1 I use the census of 1861 in these volumes, because when I first began to 

 publish these volumes it was the latest. Besides, the acreage of the counties had not 

 been at all modified. 



