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THE PRESIDENT S ADDRESS. 



I suppose there is no one who has not thus regarded our 

 county as a western refuge, and most of us have been pleased 

 to think how unavailing have been successive attacks to modify 

 the stock of the people. The traces of Roman occupation are 

 extremely few, the most important pointing to the christianising 

 of Britain in the later days of Roman authority. It was long 

 before the Saxon passed through the county, and though he 

 and the Norman after him established sovereignty over it, but 

 few Saxons or Normans came to dwell within it, and the people 

 remained a scarcely modified Celtic race down to our own times. 

 But my purpose to-day is to lead you to turn to another picture. 

 Instead of thinking of Cornishmen pressed by the enemy within 

 the county, I would draw your attention to the outward 

 movement of Cornishmen from the county. We may see, as it 

 were, some kind of elasticity, a reaction from the movement of 

 the past, a regurgitation of a race long pent up between the 

 northern and southern seas. The population of the county 

 taken in the several censuses of this century, give us the 

 following figures : — 

 1801 



This table may awake at first sight feelings of surprise, of 

 pain, and of regret. We see to our astonishment a rapid increase 

 of numbers in the first half of the century, followed almost 

 immediately by what has been a continuous decline. 



The period to which we are accustomed to look back as a 

 period of imperfect law, and of injurious commercial and 

 industrial regulations, shows an increase in population ; whilst 

 reform of law, improved administration, greater freedom of 

 commerce and industry, have been accompanied by decline. I 



