Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 2Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
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Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 2
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
English essays
Does not Mr Sadler see that, if the registers of England, which are
notoriously very defective, give a result exactly corresponding almost
to an unit with that obtained from the registers of France, which are
notoriously very full and accurate, this proves the very reverse of what
he employs it to prove? The correspondence of the registers proves that
there is no correspondence in the facts. In order to raise the average
fecundity of England even to the level of the average fecundity of
the peers of the three kingdoms, which is 3.81 to a marriage, it is
necessary to add nearly six per cent. to the number of births given in
the English registers. But, if this addition be made, we shall have,
in the counties of England, from Huntingdonshire to Worcestershire
inclusive, 4.30 births to a marriage or thereabouts: and the boasted
coincidence between the phenomena of propagation in France and
England disappears at once. This is a curious specimen of Mr Sadler's
proficiency in the art of making excuses. In the same pamphlet he
reasons as if the same registers were accurate to one in a thousand, and
as if they were wrong at the very least by one in eighteen.
He tries to show that we have not taken a fair criterion of the
fecundity of the peers. We are not quite sure that we understand his
reasoning on this subject. The order of his observations is more than
usually confused, and the cloud of words more than usually thick. We
will give the argument on which he seems to lay most stress in his own
words:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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