368 Of the Checks to Population Bk. ii. 



mate by six hundred thousand. He calculates 

 however a loss of a million of persons more, from 

 the other causes of destruction attendant on the 

 revolution; but as this loss fell indiscriminately 

 on all ages and both sexes, it would not affect the 

 population in the same degree, and will be much 

 more than covered by the 600,000 men in the full 

 vigour of life, which remain above Sir Francis's 

 calculation. It should be observed also, that in 

 the latter part of the revolutionary war the mili- 

 tary conscriptions were probably enforced with 

 still more severity in the newly-acquired territo- 

 ries than in the old state; and as the population 

 of these new acquisitions is estimated at five or six 

 millions, it would bear a considerable proportion 

 of the million and a half supposed to be destroyed 

 in the armies. 



The law which facilitated divorces to so 

 great a degree in the early part of the revolution 

 was radically bad both in a moral and political 

 view, yet, under the circumstance of a great 

 scarcity of men, it would operate a little like 

 the custom of polygamy, and increase the num- 

 ber of children in proportion to the number of 

 husbands. In addition to this, the women with- 

 out husbands do not appear all to have been 

 barren ; as the proportion of illegitimate births is 

 now raised to TT of the whole number of births, 

 from -J T ,* which it was before the revolution; and 

 though this be a melancholy proof of the depra- 



* Essai de Peuchet, p. 2S. 



