Ch. xii. Births, Deaths, and Marriages. 501 



o 



The table, from which this is copied, contains 

 the marriages, births and deaths for every parti- 

 cular year during the whole period ; but to bring 

 it into a smaller compass, I have retained only 

 the general average drawn from the shorter pe- 

 riods of five and four years, except where the 

 numbers for the individual years presented any 

 fact worthy of particular observation. The year 

 1711, immediately succeeding the great plague, 

 is not included by Sussmilch in any general 

 average ; but he has given the particular numbers, 

 and if they be accurate they shew the very sudden 

 and prodigious effect of a great mortality on the 

 number of marriages. 



Sussmilch calculates that above one third of 

 the people was destroyed by the plague ; and 

 yet, notwithstanding this great diminution of the 

 population, it will appear by a reference to the 

 table, that the number of marriages in the year 

 1711 was very nearly double the average of the 

 six years preceding the plague.* To produce this 



* The number of people before tbe plague, according to 

 Sussmilch's calculations, (vol. i. ch. ix. sect. 173,) was 570,000, 

 from which if we subtract 247,733, the number dying in the 

 plague, the remainder, 322,267, will be the population after the 

 plague ; which, divided by the number of marriages and the 

 number of births for the year 1711, makes the marriages about 

 one twenty-sixth part of the population, and the births about one 

 tenth part. Such extraordinary proportions could only occur in 

 any country in an individual year. If they were to continue, they 

 would double the population in less than ten years. It is possible 

 that there may be a mistake in the table, and that the births and 

 marriages of the plague years are included in the year 1711; 



