Ch. vi. in France. 373 



tioned have operated in part. The births have 

 increased, and the deaths of those remaining in 

 the country have diminished ; so that, putting the 

 two circumstances together, it will probably ap- 

 pear, when the results of all the reports of the pre- 

 fects are known, that, including those who have 

 fallen in the armies and by violent means, the 

 deaths have not exceeded the births in the course 

 of the revolution. 



The returns of the prefects are to be given for 

 the year IX. of the republic, and to be compared 

 with the year 1789; but if the proportion of 

 births to the population be given merely for the 

 individual year IX. it will not shew the average 

 proportion of births to the population during 

 the course of the revolution. In the confusion 

 occasioned by this event, it is not probable that 

 any very exact registers should have been kept; 

 but from theory I should be inclined to expect 

 that soon after the beginning of the war, and at 

 other periods during the course of it, the propor- 

 tion of births to the whole population would be 

 greater than in 1800 and 1801.* If it should 



* In the Statistique G hie rale et Parliculiire de la France, et de 

 sen Colonics, lately published, the returns of the prefects for the 

 year IX. are given, and seem to justify this conjecture. The 

 births are 955,430, the deaths 8-' 1,87 1, and the marriages 202, 177. 

 These numbers hardly equal Necker's estimates ; and yet all the 

 calculations in this work, both with respect to the whole popula- 

 tion and its proportion to a square league, make the old territory 

 of France more populous now than at the beginning of the revo- 

 lution. The estimate of the population, at the period of the (on- 

 diluent Assembly, has already been mentioned; and at this time 



