592 
“ It will be found, when we afterwards come to consider the results 
in Scotland, that female life is very greatly in excess of male life 
proportionally as compared with England ; that the unmarried 
females and widows are in much larger proportion ; and that illegi- 
timacy prevails to a wider extent — the result of the comparison 
being that there is more illegitimacy where there is a greater excess 
of female life ; but, although I draw this general conclusion, I cannot, 
in considering the table referred to above, or the table applicable to 
Scotland which follows, prove in detail that in every county where 
there is an excess of females there is an excess of bastardy. I must 
ask my readers to take the wider view of our condition, and deal, as 
a whole, with the comparative effects, for there are many acting and 
reacting influences in operation in particular localities which produce 
results very different from those we anticipated. We must mass 
the results, and the comparison of Scotland and England is on a 
sufficiently large scale to give us confidence in our conclusions. 
“ As an example of the difficulty of drawing conclusions from 
limited or local facts, let us consider London. We find there 
120*53 females for 100 males, 125 spinsters to 100 bachelors, 
and 296*86 widows for 100 widowers, with only 4*2 children born 
out of wedlock to 100 births. The hasty conclusion would be, that 
London is more moral than the whole of England, for we find, in 
running our eye down the bastardy column, that the return of 
illegitimate children is less than for any county in England, and 
more than 2 per cent, less than the average for the whole kingdom. 
I am afraid that that conclusion will not stand investigation. I do 
not mean to say that the solution of the problem is an easy one, 
but I do not think the deduction, based on a purer morality, is 
correct. It is more than probable that the great prevalence of 
prostitution has the effect of diminishing child-bearing among 
unmarried persons ; and I have no doubt that every large town will 
show the same result.” 
“ I have now shown — 
“ 1. That the male births exceed the females in a certain propor- 
tion, which, in the state of this country, may be called a constant 
ratio, or, in modern scientific language, 4 an ultimate statistical 
unit,’ if there be such a thing. 
“ 2. That males die more rapidly than females, more particularly 
in early life. 
