586 
only equal to the female deaths, would also be greatly in excess of 
what they should be. It is a sad state of matters — -a national 
calamity, and demands attention.” 
“ Again, above thirty-five years of age to the end of life, the male 
deaths bear an unfavourable comparison with the females. Men sink 
exhausted, worn out, leaving widows and young children to increase 
our difficulties. The loss of infant life is a great evil, but the loss 
of man in the prime of life is a greater. No one can fill the father’s 
place in a poor man’s home ; his death is frequently an immediate 
fall from competence to destitution. The struggle is for existence, 
and children are brought up, if reared at all, weak in body and 
mind, oftener indeed cut off by disease, helping to fill up in rotation 
the death-roll of our Juggernaut, which year by year demands its 
sacrifice. If they survive, the want of means denies them educa- 
tion, and they are often left a legacy to fill our jails and poor-houses. 
A few years added in the aggregate to male lives would create a 
great change in all this; widows would be reduced in number, and 
many children now thrown helpless on the world would be supported 
and educated in their earlier years. Our unnatural position acts 
and reacts to our disadvantage, and the excess of male deaths at the 
periods shown is an ever fruitful source of sin and misery.” 
“ If this is bad in England, it is worse in Scotland. That country 
has many other difficulties also to contend with peculiar to its posi- 
tion ; but as I afterwards propose to limit my observations to that 
country, I shall reserve further remark.” 
In order to prove that the increased death rate among males 
was not increased by special or local causes, Mr Thomson intro- 
duced a table showing that the results over the whole of England 
are much the same, exhibiting a greater mortality almost universally 
among the male sex. 
Also a table taken from the returns of the Registrar- General, 
exhibiting the per-centage of deaths among males and females during 
twenty years, with the relative proportions which these deaths bear 
to each other, proving at the same time that the greater mortality 
among male lives is constant. 
These tables proved conclusively the first proposition, that the 
mortality of male life is greater in England than that of female 
life. Mr Thomson then proceeded to show what causes have pro- 
duced these results : — 
