"in every respect as favourable to the experiment as we could desire." (p. 187.)

Mr. Place enters into these "advantageous circumstances," and shews the total absurdity of ascribing any one to the case of Sweden: its soil, climate, and government being in the highest degree obstructive to the multiplication of its inhabitants. This part of the subject occupies some pages of Mr. Place's book, who, in a convincing style, demonstrates that under these impeding circumstances fewer are born, and more die in childhood, than would do so in different circumstances. The wretched condition of the mass of the people for want of adequate means of subsistence, the degraded and servile offices to which the women are subjected, the oppression exercised by the nobles, the occurrence of ruinous wars, and occasional famines: all these combine to render Sweden as little likely to afford facilities to increase as any country in the known world. Yet Mr. Godwin holds it up as presenting an epitome of all advantages.

The tables do not specify at what age the women of Sweden commonly marry, nor what proportion of them. This difficulty Mr. Godwin is good enough to solve by taking it for granted that all women, or very nearly all, marry, and that at twenty years of age. This, together with the wish on the part of the government that the people should multiply, amounts to a positive proof that as many are born as could be born from the same proportion of marriageable women in any other country. The means of subsistence do not constitute a necessary concomitant to either woman or child's life, it would seem; since the increase of population depends on causes perfectly distinct from this consideration.

Mr. Place proceeds to point out in what respects the United States affords facilities to increase beyond that of Sweden, and which he recapitulates thus:

"The United States of America are happily free from all the most material evils, whether of government or climate, which afflict Sweden, and inevitably tend to the destruction of human life in its early stages. The poverty too, which must deter numbers from marrying in Sweden, and cannot fail to delay the period of marriage generally, may hardly be said to operate at all in any part of the United States. In the one country, a family, if it be not a curse, is a very heavy burden, in the other it is an actual blessing."-P. 92. The proportion of females between sixteen and forty-five years of age to the whole population, is, in America, about seventeen in the hundred. In Sweden, twenty-two in the hundred. On the other hand, the proportion of children under sixteen to the whole population, is, in America, about fifty in the hundred; whilst in Sweden it was (in 1805) only thirty-six in the hundred. Consequently there must be a greater number of children born and reared to a marriage in America, than to one in Sweden.

Mr. Godwin admits that the children under sixteen constitute half the population of America. In defiance of which admission he insists that no greater number are born to a marriage than in Europe; and as he has Dr. Franklin's authority for saying, that "half the born must

* That is to say, in Sweden; for no other country is allowed to be taken as evidence on the question.

die in their non-age," nothing will ever induce him to suppose the contrary. Dr. Franklin said so, and they do so in Sweden, therefore it is the case in America. This is a sample of the logic contained in Mr. Godwin's book. According to him, there is but one way by which marriages can be more productive; viz. by a larger number being born. The possibility of rearing them with greater chance of reaching maturity goes for nothing with him. The facility of obtaining wholesome food, good nursing, the healthful habits of the parents, absence of want and misery-all are ineffectual as preservatives from the lot to which Dr. Franklin has pronounced the children of men subject. Concerning this particular point, Mr. Place has brought forward certain statements, taken from the American Philosophical Transactions*, which shew that in the parish of Hengham, State of Massachusetts, in fifty-four years, there were,

"It is plain that the constitution and course of nature did not kill half the born at Hengham in their non-age, the whole of those who died at every age being less than half the number born." Place, p. 74.

Mr. Godwin being compelled to acknowledge the numerical increase of the population of America, by evidence which neither his own wishes nor Dr. Johnson's oracular opinion on his side, can warrant him in rejecting, resorts to other modes of accounting for this phenomenon. He asserts with confidence, that it has been produced by emigration from the different countries of Europe, chiefly from the British dominions. In order to estimate the numbers requisite to make good the hypothesis of emigration, let us quote Mr. Godwin's scale of acknowledged increase.

Mr. Place detects the unfairness of omitting the census of 1800, with much discernment.

"To have asserted that 193,014+ persons actually arrived every year, and remained as settlers in the United States, from 1800 to 1810, and that 276,809* did so from 1810 to 1820, would have been too large a draft for credulity itself to answer; an average was therefore made to run back as far as 1790, including a period of 20 years, &c."-PLACE, p. 47.

Nine-tenths of the supposed supplies of emigrants, Mr. Place considers to have proceeded from this and the sister kingdom. To ascertain, in the most correct manner, the real amount of these, Mr. Place has inspected the returns to parliament, furnished by the owners of British shipping; and from his careful and attentive examination results the surest evidence of the fallacy and exaggeration in which Mr. Godwin and his partizans have indulged.

Among others, Mr. Godwin avails himself of the authority of Mr. Cobbett, who, in a Letter which appeared in his "Register," Aug. 14,

And alluded to by Mr. Godwin, in his Enquiry.
The number necessary to account for the increase.

1819, dated Long Island, State of New York, affirms, that "within the last twelve months, upwards of 150,000 have landed from England, to settle here." Now the returns to Parliament shew that the total number of vessels cleared out from all the ports of Great Britain and Ireland, for the United States of North America, in the year 1819, was as follows:

And among this number of passengers were many merchants, clerks,
travellers, and others, who were not emigrants. So much for Mr.
Cobbett's accuracy.
Mr. Place passes on to quote farther facts in dis-

proof of the vast arrivals assumed by Mr. Godwin.

Mr. Wakefield's statements are conclusive against them, as far as relates to Ireland.*

Dr. Seybright's "Statistical Annals," a work published at Philadelphia, under the sanction of the American Government in 1818, falsifies the notion of excessive Immigration. Dr. S. 66 says, Though we admit that 10,000 foreigners might have arrived in the United States in 1794, we cannot allow that they did so in an equal number in any preceding or subsequent year, till 1817."

In another passage he says, "In 1817, one of the great years of emigration to the United States, it appears, that from all parts of the world, the arrivals in the ten principal ports of the United States were 22,240. The returns were obtained from the records of the Customhouses."

Dr. Seybright, in short, concludes, that 6000 settlers per annum, from 1790 to 1810, was the utmost the United States could have received.-Place, p. 62.

In the National Calendar for 1821 is a list of passengers, who had arrived in the different ports of the United States from the 30th of September 1819 to the 30th of September 1820, which amounts to 7001 persons; of whom 1959 were females, and 5042 males. Mr. Place mentions several reasons to shew how little ground there is to question the precision and fidelity of the returns, and closes the second chapter, with a table of the increase of emigrants, taken with the utmost latitude of allowance, by which the aggregate amount of the emigrants, together with their annual increase by procreation from 1796 to 1820, is 365,694.

"The population of the United States in 1800 was 5,309,758

in 1790

Shewing an increase of

3,929,326

1,380,432

If this increase be divided by two, we get the amount of the population in 1795, viz. 4,619,542. The share which the emigrants have had in the increase since that period, is, at the outside, 365,694, whilst

* Wakefield's Account of Ireland, vol. ii. p. 712.
2 N

VOL. IV. NO. XVIII.

the population is now admitted to consist of 10,000,000. We do not see how this body of substantial facts, from unquestionable authorities, can possibly fail to convince every one of the tendency and power of increase which belong to the human species.

Here are the returns of the departures, and those of the arrivals, and a liberal allowance made for the probable additions by modes which do not appear, and the inadequate amount of the increase by immigration is distinctly shewn; so that no one, who is not prepared to suggest the possibility of thousands having walked over to America, can withstand the inferences which flow from the above very complete statement of the case.

The Dissertation of Mr. David Booth occupies some space in Mr. Place's book. The important points of this consist of the argument against the geometrical ratio of increase, and the calculation relative to the numerical increase in America, which he refers to immigration. Mr. Booth picks out from the Swedish tables nine years of exceedingly slow increase, and founds upon them an average of the progression of the Swedish population for a large number of years, calculated to a table of 10,000 inhabitants, which he has made to represent the whole world. He asserts that there can be no increase in a geometrical ratio, unless there be an increase every year in the requisite proportion; consequently that, as in Sweden, during some particular years, scarcely any increase at all took place, the idea of a geometrical progression is inadmissible. Mr. Booth, assuming the tables of Sweden to be a standard for calculating the increase of every other country whatsoever, hence concludes, that in the United States this ratio is equally untenable. The absurdity of applying the Swedish tables to countries so very differently circumstanced, has been before commented upon by Mr. Place; but here he exposes the partiality of Mr. Booth's statement in another point of view.

"Mr. Booth takes the consecutive nine years from the series which contains the lowest rate of increase; during the greatest part of the whole series, the population increased by more than double the number taken by Mr. Booth, and then he says, the population of Sweden is to be considered as not increasing at all.

"He takes no notice of the population having increased nearly one half in fifty-four years, but he constructs tables to prove (as he says) that there can be no doubling in geometrical progression; nor, according to him, any increase at all; so he reasons here. He might, if he pleased, have taken the nine years of the greatest increase; he might have taken the three years of greatest increase, inasmuch as, for the construction of such a table as his, three years would have answered the purpose as well as nine. But then be would have confuted himself, by shewing that the period of doubling would be very short. He might have made his table from a period in the series, when, as appears by the Swedish table, the population was declining; and then, upon his plan, he might have proved that, not only in Sweden, but also in the North American States, the population was fast wearing out. Tables constituted upon such arbitrary data, and so applied, are absolutely good for nothing." Place, p. 107.

The fundamental error in the calculations of both Mr. Booth and Mr. Godwin, lies in the notion, that the value of human life is the same in America as in Sweden, and that there is but one rule to be admitted for the proportion of deaths in all cases. One half is always to be

knocked off for the benefit of the maxim of Dr. Franklin. In spite of the American tables, shewing the deaths to fall short of the births by one half, in spite of every reasonable probability of children not dying so frequently in America, nothing can rescue half the born from this inevitable deduction. Accordingly, a comparative statement is presented of the numbers in the United States in 1800 and 1810, which, upon the usual premises, is supposed to be decisive in proving the extent of immigration.

"The whole White population," says Mr. Booth, "of the United States in 1800, was 4,305,971: these in ten years would be diminished by a fourth." -Mr. Place continues: "All of them would be upwards of ten years of age in 1810, and granting this deduction of oue-fourth, there would remain 3,229,479. Mr. Booth cuts off the 29,479, saying,It is very improbable that more than 3,200,000 should be alive in 1810. But the actual census was 3,845,389, giving a surplus of 645,389 of those above ten years of age, which can be accounted for in no other way than by emigration."

Mr. Place remarks upon this plausible statement:

"The number of White persons above ten years of age, in 1800, according to the census, was

"Mr. Booth says the number of the same description of persons in 1810, ought to have been.

Admitting, by his own account, a clear addition to that part of the population which was above ten years of age, of

2,871,021

3,200,000

328,979 "Here, then, we have Mr. Booth endeavouring to prove that, if not a single emigrant had set his foot in the country during these ten years, the population above ten years of age would have increased 328,979.” p. 121.

Now, if so vast an augmentation took place in ten years, of the numbers of grown persons, as 328,979, we may safely assume the additions of such as were under ten years of age, to have amounted to a still larger number; and thus, even according to Mr, Booth, (whose estimate of the value of life in America is so erroneous) the fact is manifest, that a considerable increase takes place by procreation alone.

No small portion of Mr. Place's book is appropriated to the discussion of Mr. Godwin's opinions regarding the population of England, which he assumes to have been but slightly augmented during the last five centuries. "How this number could have been either produced or maintained amidst the terrible disasters of preceding ages, Mr. Godwin gives himself no trouble to inquire."-Place, p. 181.

Mr. Place, however, has entered upon the inquiry with industrious attention, and has taken a comprehensive survey of the state of this country from the Roman invasion downwards to the present time; subdividing it into seven historical periods, marking the circumstances which would influence the progress of population, and comparing the evidence of its increase or decrease.

After some quotations from Saxon writers (assisted by the authority of Mr. Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons) Mr. Place takes as the amount of the population at the Norman conquest 2,000,000, and then proceeds to examine the probabilities of their arriving at the amount of ten millions in 1339, the period at which Mr. Godwin asserts England was as populous as at present.

The state of the kingdom up to that time is shewn to have afforded no probability of an increase in the population; on the contrary, every check that bad government, intestine wars, famine (which in the reign of Edward II. afflicted the nation several years), wretched husbandry