390 Of the Checks to Population Bk. ii. 



day-labour in England so high as three shillings 

 and four pence. 



Allowing for some errors in these statements, 

 they are evidently sufficient to establish a very 

 marked improvement in the condition of the lower 

 classes of people in France. But it is next to a 

 physical impossibility that such a relief from the 

 pressure of distress should take place without a 

 diminution in the rate of mortality ; and if this 

 diminution in the rate of mortality has not been 

 accompanied by a rapid increase of population, it 

 must necessarily have been accompanied by a 

 smaller proportion of births. In the interval be- 

 tween 1802 and 1813 the population seems to have 

 increased, but to have increased slowly. Conse- 

 quently a smaller proportion of births, deaths, and 

 marriages, or the more general operation of pru- 

 dential restraint, is exactly what the circum- 

 stances would have led us to expect. There is 

 perhaps no proposition more incontrovertible than 

 this, that, in two countries, in which the rate of 

 increase, the natural healthiness of climate, and 

 the state of towns and manufactures are sup- 

 posed to be nearly the same, the one in which the 

 pressure of poverty is the greatest will have the 

 greatest proportion of births, deaths, and mar- 

 riages. 



It does not then by any means follow, as has 

 been supposed, that because since 1802 the pro- 

 portion of births in France has been as 1 in 30, 

 Necker ought to have used 30 as his multiplier in- 

 stead of 25-f . If the representations given of the 



