LAW OF POPULATION ILLUSTRATED 177 



I incline to believe that the registered number of 

 births and the registered number of deaths err by 

 defect, and that if we possessed the actual death-rate 

 and the actual birth-rate, we should find that the 

 average length of life in Russia was nearer twenty- 

 five years than thirty, and that the births were 

 proportionally to population considerably more 

 numerous. 



I have already stated that this chapter is of a 

 statistical character. I cannot therefore hope to 

 make it interesting to those, and they are many, to 

 whom statistical details are a weariness to the flesh ; 

 but these details provide the data and set forth the 

 phenomena that are required to illustrate the operation 

 of the law of population. I hold to the belief that 

 an understanding of that law, besides delivering the 

 human mind from the frightful phantasmagoria of the 

 Malthusian theory, may in the future be practically 

 useful in the cause of advancing civilisation. From 

 the principles affecting the movement of population, 

 which I have endeavoured to establish, it follows that 

 when the mortality of a community undergoes a 

 continuous decrease from decade to decade, the number 

 of births proportional to the population must experi- 

 ence a corresponding decline. This is, of course, 

 what always takes place, although in no single case it 

 may be apparent. 



The appearance of a corresponding decline is taken 

 away by the constant action of factors that operate to 

 elevate the birth-rate, viz. the extension of the labour 



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