freak of fashion and speculation on the marriages of Birmingham was to reduce them most seriously; and it had probably more to do with the licentious Birmingham riots, than the more patent political agitation of the day. The disuse of wigs, buckles, buttons, and leather breeches at the close of the eighteenth century, is supposed to have affected the business of a million of people. In 1765, the peace of London had been disturbed by the periwig-makers, who went in procession to petition the young king, “submitting to His Majesty’s goodness and wisdom, whether his own example was not the only means of rescuing them from their distress, as far as it was occasioned by so many people wearing their own hair.” When change of fashions influence unfavourably the employment of the people, and when, at the same time, influenced or increased by lack of work, their poverty increases, matrimony is at a discount. It is not simply the poorer classes, dependent on weekly wages for their support, who feel the influence of times of business activity, and allow it to impel them to matrimony. When the workman is busy, the trader makes profits, the landlord gets his rents, and all sections of the community feel the beneficial influence of a prosperous season. The number of those persons entirely removed from such social sympathies is very few; indeed, as a great rule, when the workmen are prosperous, all classes above them are thriving too: and when the one section of the great English family is influenced to matrimony in an unusual degree, the others feel the influence of the same law. When the reaction, a period of depression, arrives, the number of marriages declines, but they have never fallen back to their original numbers. A time of prosperity lifts up the total in a remarkable manner, and when the happy time ceases, the number falls—but not equal to the level from which it sprung. It is to a certain degree a permanent increase.