528 General Deductions from the Bk. ii. 



for the greater proportion of births to deaths in 

 former times, mentioned by many authors; as 

 it has always been a common practice to esti- 

 mate these proportions from too short periods, 

 and generally to reject the years of plague as ac- 

 cidental. 



The average proportion of births to deaths in 

 England during the last century may be considered 

 as about 12 to 10, or 120 to 100. The proportion in 

 France for ten years, ending in 1780, was about 

 115 to 100.* Though these proportions undoubt- 

 edly varied at different periods during the century, 

 yet we have reason to think that they did not vary 

 in any very considerable degree; and it will ap- 

 pear therefore, that the population of France and 

 England had accommodated itself more nearly to 

 the average produce of each country than many 

 other states. The operation of the preventive 

 check — wars — the silent though certain destruc- 

 tion of life in large towns and manufactories — and 

 the close habitations and insufficient food of many 

 of the poor — prevent population from outrunning 

 the means of subsistence; and, if I may use an 

 expression which certainly at first appears strange, 

 supersede the necessity of great and ravaging epi- 

 demics to destroy what is redundant. If a wasting- 

 plague were to sweep off two millions in England, 

 and six millions in France, it cannot be doubted 

 that, after the inhabitants had recovered from the 



* Necker de 1' Administration des Finances, torn. i. c. ix. p. 2-55. 



