Mr. Sadler tells us that he purposely avoided the use of the word proportion in stating his principle. He seems, therefore, to allow that the word proportion would have been improper. Yet he did in fact employ it in explaining his principle, accompanied with an awkward explanation intended to signify that, though he said proportion, he meant something quite different {280}from proportion. We should not have said so much on this subject, either in our former article, or at present, but that there is in all Mr. Sadler’s writings an air of scientific pedantry, which renders his errors fair game. We will now let the matter rest; and, instead of assailing Mr. Sadler with our verbal criticism, proceed to defend ourselves against his literal criticism. “_The Reviewer promised his readers that some curious results should follow from his shuffling. We will enable him to keep his word. “‘In two English counties,’ says he, ‘which contain from 50 to 100 inhabitants on the square mile, the births to 100 marriages are, according to Mr. Sadler, 420; but in 44 departments of France, in which there are from one to two hecatares [hectares] to each inhabitant, that is to say, in which the population is from 125 to 250, or rather more, to the square mile, the number of births to one hundred marriages is 423 and a fraction.’ “The first curious result is, that our Reviewer is ignorant, not only of the name, but of the extent, of a French hectare; otherwise he is guilty of a practice which, even if transferred to the gambling-table, would, I presume, prevent him from being allowed ever to shuffle, even there, again. He was most ready to pronounce upon a mistake of one per cent, in a calculation of mine, the difference in no wise affecting the argument in hand; but here I must inform him, that his error, whether wilfully or ignorantly put forth, involves his entire argument. “The French hectare I had calculated to contain 107708 67/100 English square feet, or 247265 acres; Dr. Kelly takes it, on authority which he gives, at 107644 English square feet. The last French Annuaires, however, state it, I perceive, as being equal to 2473914 acres. The difference is very trifling, and will not in the slightest degree cover our critic’s error. When, therefore, the Reviewer calculates the population of the departments of France thus: ‘from one to two hectares to each inhabitant, that is to say, in which the population is from 125 to 250, or rather more, to the square mile; his ‘that {281}is to say’ is that which he ought not to have said--no rare case with him, as we shall show throughout.”_