Chap. V. 
CIVILISED NATIONS. 
175 
from a high rate of mortality, and the extremely pro- 
fligate leave few offspring. The poorest classes crowd 
into towns, and it has been proved by Dr. Stark from 
the statistics of ten years in Scotland, 20 that at all ages 
the death-rate is higher in towns than in rural districts, 
“ and during the first five years of life the town death- 
“ rate is almost exactly double that of the rural districts.” 
As these returns include both the rich and the poor, no 
doubt more than double the number of births would be 
requisite to keep up the number of the very poor inha- 
bitants in the towns, relatively to those in the country. 
With women, marriage at too early an age is highly 
injurious ; for it has been found in France that, “ twice 
“ as many wives under twenty die in the year, as died out 
“ of the same number of the unmarried.” The mortality, 
also, of husbands under twenty is “ excessively high,” 21 
but what the cause of this may be seems doubtful. 
Lastly, if the men who prudently delay marrying until 
they can bring up their families in comfort, were to 
select, as they often do, women in the prime of life, the 
rate of increase in the better class would be only slightly 
lessened. 
It was established from an enormous body of statistics, 
taken during 1853, that the unmarried men throughout 
France, between the ages of twenty and eighty, die in a 
much larger proportion than the married : for instance, 
out of every 1000 unmarried men, between the ages of 
twenty and thirty, 11*3 annually died, whilst of the 
married only 6*5 died. 22 A similar law was proved to 
20 « Tenth Annual Beport of Births, Deaths, &c., in Scotland/ 1867, 
p. xxix. 
21 These quotations are taken from our highest authority on such 
questions, namely, Dr. Farr, in his paper “ On the Influence of Marriage 
on the Mortality of the French People,” read before the Nat. Assoc, 
for the Promotion of Social Science, 1858. 
22 Dr. Farr, ibid. The quotations given below are extracted from 
the same striking paper. 
