of the People of Victoria. 117 



average conjugal condition of this colony and that of Great 

 Britain ; l)iit it is not merely the average of a country which 

 is to be taken into account in cases of this kind. Where 

 social defects or difficulties have to be considered in legis- 

 lation, provision has, if possible, to be made for all cases^ for 

 the worst as for the best. It is for this purpose that statis- 

 tical information in detail for every political and mimicipal 

 division of a country is desirable ; and a great deal of all 

 legislation, though it ostensibly has a general application to 

 a whole country, is really designed to apply only to certain 

 parts of it. !^Iany enactments, thougli law as regards a 

 whole territory, are practically nullities throughout the 

 greater portion of it — being designed to meet cases Avliich 

 arise only amongst certain classes, or in certain branches of 

 industry. 



Passing, accordingly, from the average to the special, we 

 find on examining the conjugal condition of the population 

 in various localities, or rather of the principal industrial 

 classes into which the inhabitants of Victoria have deter- 

 mined, that there is here a greater variety in this particular 

 than is to be found in older countries, and that the picture 

 presented by the colony in the aggregate is, though bad, 

 much less unfavorable than that offered by portions of it. 

 This remark, though applicable in a high degree to those 

 parts where pastoral pm'suits are prevalent, is intended to 

 apply particularly to the mining population, whose cii'cum- 

 stances are more deserving of attention^ because this class 

 is more numerous than either the manufacturing and 

 trading, or the agricultiu-al sections of the community, form- 

 ing, as it does, 38 per cent, of the population of Eiu'opean 

 origin. 



Tiu-ning, in the first instance, to the circumstances of the 

 male population of the age of twenty years and upwards, wc 

 perceive that aaIuIc the proportion of husbands in the rural 

 districts nearly corresponds with the average of the colony, 

 being 42 in 100, and that while the proportion in the seaport 

 toA\Tis — 57 in 100 — does not vary much from that prevalent 

 in (ireat Britain — G2 in 100 — the husbands form but 35 in 

 100 on the gold-fields. Moreover, the excess in the number 

 of married men above married women there, which amounts to 

 0,072, shows that no less than 22 per cent.* of this small pro- 



* The total uumber of husbands was 27,0.32 ; and dednctiug those who 

 could have had no wives mth them, the balance left was 21,6C0. 



