Amid such general thrift and wealth, there has been every reason for the native, like the foreign population, to increase. The preventive check of the economists, though undoubtedly present, can have played but an inferior part, as we shall prove. Emigration westward, the only apparent positive check, though extensive, cannot wholly account for the result. But statistics exist by whose light, if acknowledged, we may read this important problem.[68] In 1850, the ratio of births to the population in Massachusetts, foreign and American combined, was 1 in 36,[69] and in 1855, 1 in 34;[70] a ratio much smaller than that obtaining in most countries of Europe, and about equaling that of France, which, in 1850, was 1 in 37. In 1855, the ratio of still-births, at the full time and premature, as compared with the living births, was 1 to 15.5.[71] In France it is 1 to 24; in Austria, 1 to 49. In 1851, the ratio of fœtal deaths to the general mortality, was 1 to 13.3;[72] in 1855,1 to 10.4.[73] In New York City, in 1856, it was 1 to 11. In any city we should expect to find the proportion much greater than in a State at large; we here find it less. The ratio of premature births to those at the full time, during the period from 1850 to 1856, was 1 to 26.1.[74] In New York, in 1857, it was 1 to 40, and in good medical practice it is found, as we have seen, to be 1 in 78. In comparing the recorded abortions and premature births in the City of New York, with the still-births there occurring at the full time, we found that the former had varied from 1 in 10, in 1838, to 1 in 4, in 1856. In the State of Massachusetts it appears, that during the fourteen years and eight months preceding 1855, there were recorded 4570 still-births, and 11,716 premature births and abortions,[75] the ratio being 1 abortion to .3 still-birth; or, in other words, it would appear from the statistics quoted, that the comparative frequency of abortions in Massachusetts is _thirteen_ times as great as in the worst statistics of the City of New York. We are willing, however, we rejoice, to modify this statement, as in the earliest of the years quoted, returns from the City of Boston seem to have been imperfect or wanting,—and to confine our calculations to a more recent period. From 1850 to 1855, the registration being much more accurate than before, and its results compiled with the greatest care, three years of the five by a noted statistician, Dr. Shurtleff, there were recorded in Massachusetts, 2976 still-births, and 5899 premature births and abortions,[76] the ratio being 1 abortion to .5 still-birth; in other words, the frequency of abortions as compared with still-births at the full time, seems at least eight times as great in Massachusetts as in the worst statistics of the City of New York.[77]