Law of Population 81 



happens that marriage is deferred for some time after 

 the necessary post has been secured owing to the 

 necessity of saving enough to pay for furniture and 

 wedding expenses. The first three years after entry 

 into such posts are those in which the greater number 

 of marriages occur. This fact is revealed to the 

 statistical expert by the marriage returns of the years 

 following the outbreak of a devastating pestilence or a 

 sanguinary war. In 1866 the mortality of Austria was 

 raised to a great height by a visitation of cholera and 

 a war with Prussia : from 29-5 per 1000 in the preceding 

 decade, the mortality rose in that year to 40-9 per 1000. 

 The total increase of deaths above the normal was 

 230,000. Consequently, a large number of posts of 

 employment were vacated, and immediately filled by 

 young men, with the result that the marriage-rate in 

 the four years following rose from an average of 82-5 

 per 1000 to 97-5, the largest number being in the third 

 year after the pestilence, and amounting to 103-5 P er 

 1000 of population. 



Some men defer marrying for several years after 

 they become able to do so ; some never marry at all ; 

 but the principles of human action are much the same 

 everywhere, and the result is the established ratio 

 between the number of marriages, births, and deaths 

 in a community. Such questions as illegitimacy, the 

 relative fecundity of different peoples, and the marry- 

 ing ages of different classes have no effect on the general 

 movement of population. The number of illegitimate 

 births in a community lessens, in its degree, the number 

 of marriages. Thus, in Vienna, where the proportion 

 of illegitimate births is excessive, the marriage rate is 

 correspondingly low. But the labour market is un- 

 affected thereby, as the illegitimate children enter it in 

 the same proportion as the legitimate, and it is found 

 that the birth-rate bears the same proportion to the 



