Bills of Mortality^ &c. 39 



unexceptional manner be deduced from them. They are 

 the foundation likewise of all calculations concerning the 

 values of assurances on lives, reversionary payments, and of 

 every scheme for providing annuities for widows, and 

 persons in old age. In a moral light, also, such tables are 

 of evident utility, as the increase of vice or virtue may be 

 determined by observing the proportion which the diseases, 

 arising from luxury, intemperance, and other similar causes, 

 bear to the rest, and in what particular places distempers 

 of this class are found to be most fatal. 



' A few examples may perhaps confirm and illustrate 

 these observations. In the Pais de Vaud, a district of 

 Bern in Switzerland, and in a country parish in Branden- 

 burgh, I in 45 of the inhabitants dies annually ; and at 

 Stoke Damerel in Devonshire, i in 54 ; whereas in 

 Vienna and Edinburgh the yearly mortality appears to 

 be I in 20 ; in London, i in 21 ; in Amsterdam and Rome, 

 I in 22 ; in Northampton, i in 26 ; and in the parish of 

 Holy Cross, near Shrewsbury, i in 33. In the Pais de 

 Vaud, the proportion of inhabitants who attain the age of 

 eighty is i in 21-^ ; in Brandenburgh, i in 22 J ; in Nor- 

 wich, I in 27 ; in Manchester, i in 30 ; in London, i in 40 ; 

 and in Edinburgh, i in 42. These facts afford a striking 

 but melancholy proof of the unfavourable influence of 

 large towns on the duration of life. From the most accu- 

 rate computation, London is found to contain 601,750 

 inhabitants; and from 1759 to 1768 the burials have 

 exceeded the christenings every year upwards of 7,000, 

 which is the recruit the metropolis requires annually from 

 the country to support the present number of its people. 

 In 1757 a survey was made of Manchester and Salford. 

 The number of inhabitants then amounted to 19,839 ; and 



