Chapter VII.: recapitulation of the evidence of the swedish tables.

It is time that we should resume the propositions relative to the multiplication of mankind, which appear to result from all the information that has been collected respecting the population of Sweden.

This information is the fruit of experience.

We are not enquiring respecting gratuitous and arbitrary suppositions, asking with Euler, what would be the consequence if the deaths bore a certain proportion to the births, which proportion either never occurred, or, if occurring “for short periods,” is substantially the same as not having occurred at all. We are not asking with Franklin, what would be the consequence, if in a certain country the marriages were twice as numerous as with us in Europe, and each marriage produced, taking one with another, eight children.

We are not enquiring how the earth was originally peopled, for which purpose, according to Derham, it was necessary that the duration of the life of man should be about one thousand years.

Our question lies in a narrow compass, and relates to “man as he is.” Owing to the great care and perseverance with which the observations on this subject have been pursued in Sweden, we have a large and a strong body of facts on which to proceed: and I believe it will not be found that any other country can produce a body of facts, which shall be at variance with those that have been collected in Sweden.

We know then, first, that the marriageable women in any settled community, or over the whole globe, do not exceed one fifth of the population.

Secondly, that the number of marriageable women does not increase from generation to generation, or increases in a very inconsiderable degree.

Thirdly, that the number of children born is pretty accurately in the proportion of one child annually to five marriages.

Fourthly, that the number of children born annually is nearly in the same proportion to the number of child-bearing women in the state.

Fifthly, that the number of births to a marriage, taken upon an average, does not exceed the proportion of four to one.

Sixthly, that the women who live to reach the child-bearing age are found pretty generally to marry; and that, if the bridegrooms are sometimes a little advanced in age, this rarely happens to the brides.

Seventhly, that early marriages do not greatly tend to increase population. In Persia, where a woman frequently marries at twelve, she is often found to be old and past child-bearing at thirty.

These are some of the principal laws relative to the propagation of the human species, so far as we are acquainted with them: and they appear to be confirmed to us by all that we know of authentic profane history.

They do not seem to convey to us with any strong evidence, that there is a power of increase in the numbers of the human species.

But they do tend very strongly to assure us, that such power of increase is at least subject to very strict limitations, and that we have nothing to fear for the well-being of any particular nation, or of the human species in general, from the operation of that power.