41 
The Census o/lSOl and Bund Depopulation. 
rustics, they are allured by the quicker movement and bustle of 
the city. In the one case, as in the other, the precise amount 
and character of the competition have been mistaken, and more 
expert inquiry has detected and exposed the error. But all 
these influences have undoubtedly contributed to popularise an 
impression that the rural districts are being deserted, and that 
the great towns are absorbing, and in the process are deterior- 
ating, the masses of the people. 
By a natural sequence the impression, unquestionably 
founded on fact, proves unable to stand fully the test of 
statistics so comprehensive as those registered in a census 
of the whole population ; and a counter-opinion is given 
currency, which is no more accurate a representation of 
the truth than the original impression. In more than one 
newspaper, and from more than one seemingly unprejudiced 
observer, we have learnt in the last few weeks that the 
influx of rural labour into the towns is a discredited myth, and 
the authority for this dogmatic statement has been generally 
sought in the article by Mr. Cannan to which we have referred. 
Before, then, we turn for ourselves to the census figures and 
examine this question from the positive side of the returns of 
the population of the rural districts, and of the numbers of the 
classes engaged in agricultural occupations, it may be well to 
see exactly what Mr. Cannan has established, approaching the 
question from the other side — that of urban immigration. 
II. Decrease of Urban Immigration in tiie Last Decade. 
The figures which Mr. Cannan has obtained are certainly of a 
nature to make hasty observers pause. He shows that “ by sub- 
tracting the excess of births over deaths — the natural increase of 
population as it is sometimes called— from the actual increase . . . 
we arrive at the net immigration ” into any particular district. 
Applying this process to nine of the largest towns in England— 
to London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, 
Bradford, Newcastle, and Bristol — and including in the towns 
certain “ registration districts ” 1 which properly belong to them, 
he finds that in the case of London (comprising in the term the 
“ registration division of London, the remainder of ‘ regis- 
tration’ Middlesex, and the unions of West Ham, Romford, 
Gravesend, Dartford, Bromley, Croydon, Kingston, and Rich- 
mond”) the “natural increase” between the beginning of 1851 
and the end of 1890 was 1,989,710. The actual increase between 
1 The boundaries of “ registration districts ” generally coincide, Mr. Cannan 
points out, with Poor-law Unions, but not always with towns as usually known. 
