6 THE CENSUS OF 1861. 



what truth, that when the details did not correspond with the totals, 

 from which they were distributed, the correspondence was arbitrarily 

 forced, or, as the expression goes, the figures were cooked. If this 

 was so, the operators shewed themselves very indifferent cooks, for 

 numerous discrepancies still remain. I have not examined the details 

 to any great extent, but, for the purposes of my investigation, I class- 

 ified the counties of Lower Canada according to the Hrench element 

 of the population, and took out the ages and deaths of each class 

 separately. I naturally checked my work, by comparing my totals 

 after the new distribution, with those given in the tables, and I found 

 numerous discrepancies. When I could discover no error in my own 

 figures, I added up the columns as printed, and the result has been 

 most materially to shake my confidence in the accuracy of the Census 

 clerks. There were not above half a dozen errors in the additions of 

 the columns of ages, but in the cross additions of the deaths by coun- 

 ties, out of sixty-five columns, of which the table consists, I found 

 twenty-seven to be wrong. The difference between the total deaths 

 as given, and the real total of all the details, is not very great, being 

 respectively 12,928 and 13,103; but this is only because the indivi- 

 dual errors balance each other. In some of the counties the differ- 

 ence is very great : thus in Levis, the total of deaths is given as 142, 

 but the details at the several ages add up to 205. As far as this par- 

 ticular question of the number of deaths is concerned, these errors are 

 of little importance, because' the figures, whichever way you take 

 them, are evidently worthless, but they lead one to look with consid- 

 erable suspicion upon other parts of the table, the ages for instance, 

 where a similar distribution of the enumerators' returns has been made 

 by the Census clerks. 



I have given below a comparative table of several different countries, 

 shewing the proportions per cent, living at different ages : 



