INFLUENCE OF MARRIAGE ON DEATH-RATE. 267 



of selection the effect of which is such as, on the 

 whole, to fill the ranks of married men- from among 

 the healthier and stronger portion of the community 

 operates in a sufficient degree to account wholly for 

 the observed death-rates ; or, lastly, the observed death- 

 rates are due to the combination, in some unknown 

 proportion, of the two causes just mentioned. 



E"o reasonable doubt can exist, as it seems to us, 

 that the third is the true conclusion to be drawn from 

 the evidence supplied by the mortality bills. Unfor- 

 tunately, the conclusion thus deduced is almost value- 

 less, because we are left wholly in doubt as to the pro- 

 portion which subsists between the effects to be ascribed 

 to the two causes thus shown to be in operation. It 

 scarcely required the evidence of statistics to prove 

 that each cause must operate to some extent. It is 

 perfectly obvious, on the one hand, that although 

 hundreds of men who would be held by insurance 

 companies to be "bad lives" may contract marriage, 

 yet on the whole a principle of selection is in operation 

 which must tend to bring the healthier portion of the 

 male community into the ranks of the married, and to 

 leave the unhealthier in the state of bachelorhood. A 

 little consideration will show also that, on the whole, 

 the members of the less healthy trades, very poor per- 

 sons, habitual drunkards, and others whose prospects 

 of long life are unfavorable, must (on the average of 

 a large number) be more likely to remain unmarried 



