

410 Of the Checks to Population Bk. ii. 



proportion of the inhabitants of any place which 

 dies annually. 



To fill up the void occasioned by this mortality 

 in towns, and to answer all further demands for 

 population, it is evident that a constant supply of 

 recruits from the country is necessary; and this 

 supply appears in fact to be always flowing in 

 from the redundant births of the country. Even 

 in those towns where the births exceed the deaths, 

 this effect is produced by the marriages of persons 

 not born in the place. At a time when our pro- 

 vincial towns were increasing much less rapidly 

 than at present, Dr. Short calculated that -^ of 

 the married were strangers.* Of 1618 married 

 men, and 1618 married women, examined at the 

 Westminster infirmary, only 329 of the men and 

 495 of the women had been born in London. f 



Dr. Price supposes that London with its neigh- 

 bouring parishes, where the deaths exceed the 

 births, requires a supply of 10,000 persons annu- 

 ally. Graunt, in his time, estimated the supply 

 for London alone at 6,000 ;% and he further ob- 

 serves, that, let the mortality of the city be what 

 it will, arising from plague, or any other great 

 cause of destruction, it always fully repairs its 

 loss in two years. § 



As all these demands, therefore, are supplied 



* New Observations on Bills of Mortality, p. 76. 



f Price's Observ. on Re vers. Pay m. vol. ii. p. 17. 



X Short's New Observ. Abstract from Graunt, p. 277. 



§ Id. p. 276. 



