A. D. 1 781, 703 



Bat the accuracy of thcfe accounts, though official, has been qucftion- 

 ed by fome writers of eminence, who have beflowcd great attention on 

 the fubjed. And, indeed, it ftrikes one at the firft glance, that a de- 

 creafc is ftated in fome counties, where there ought certainly to be an 

 increafe. Lancafliire in particular is here llatcd as having fallen off. 

 But it is unqueftlonable, that the two rapidly-increafing towns of Liver- 

 pool and Manchefler with their thriving dependencies, fituated in that 

 county, have greatly augmented their number of houfes between the 

 years 1750 and 1781 ; and it is equally certain, that the county in 

 general has been in an advancing ftate of population and profperity. It 

 is not to be fuppofed, that Wiltfhire, Somerfet, and Gloucefter-fliire, the 

 feat of the flourifhing and increafing woollen manufaclure, can be de- 

 clining in the number or goodnefs of their houfes ; or that Surrey, 

 wherein a collection of buildings, which, if remote from London, would 

 be reckoned a large town, has within that time ftarted up inS'. George's 

 fields only, befides the vaft numbers of other new buildings, the effects 

 of the growing opulence of the capital, could have fewer chargeable 

 houfes in 1781 than in 1750, On the other hand, we canfcarcely lup- 

 pofe, that fome counties have advanced fo very much as appears by thefe 

 accounts, e. g. Weftmoreland, Anglefey, Sec. But there feems very 

 good reafon to believe, that, upon the whole, the number of chargeable 

 houfes (that is, houfes of the better fort) inflead of decreafing 7,697 

 throughout the whole kingdom of England and Wales, has more pro- 

 bably increafed as many in thofe thirty-one years. Sir Frederic Morton 

 Eden has with laudable patriotic induflry collected the numbers of 

 houfes and people in a great number of towns and pariflics, in ninety of 

 which, whereof he has obtained the numbers of the charged and 

 exempted houfes, the charged are 24,464, and the exemj)ted 30,005 : 

 and thence he infers, that the whole number of exempted houfes in 

 I'^ngland and Wales muft be confiderably above 900,000, or above three 

 times as many as were returned ; and that the whole population mufl 

 be near to nine millions. And Mr. Chalmers, from comparmg the 

 proportion of the charged and exempted houfes in the year 1690, con- 

 cludes, that the exempted houfes in 178 1 could not be fewer than 

 865,000, making in all 1,586,000 houfes, inhabited by about eight mil- 

 lions and a half of people. Upon the whole it is very evident, that the 

 exempted houfes are much more numerous than they appear in the ac- 

 count, and that any cftimatc of the population or condition of the 

 country, founded on the returns of the furveyors of the Ivuile and win- 

 dow duties mull be very fallacious. [Sec Cbalmers's l'.i]::K.:tf, c. \i — 

 Eden's State of the poor, V. iii, p. cccli.] 



I have now before me ci)pies of accounts of the uuiuIkts ol houlcs in 

 England and Scotland, made up at the olVue f' ' ■; 2T,^ j ..1 .ivr 

 1 78 1, which, enumerating the inhabited and cli.i; ..oulesi 



with the cottages, in each county make the whole nun^ber of both dc- 

 fcriptions in England, including Wales and Berwick upon Tweed, to be 



