operation of the policy pursued and consequent anarchy produced in the province of Bantam, we shall have some idea of the depopulating causes that existed under the Dutch administration, and the force of that tendency to increase, which could overcome obstacles so powerful. Most of these drains and checks were removed during the short period of British administration; but it is to be regretted (so far as accurate data on this subject would be desirable) that there was not time to learn satisfactorily the result of a different system, or to institute the proper registers, by which alone questions of population can be determined. The only document of that kind, to which I can venture to refer as authentic, is a statement of the births and deaths that occurred in the given general population of the _Priáng'en_ Regencies for one year. From this account it would appear, that even in these Regencies, where, if we except Batavia, the checks to population are allowed to be greater than elsewhere, the births were to the total existing population as 1 to 39, and the deaths as 1 to 40 very nearly; that the births exceed the deaths by 618, or about 1 in 40, in a population of 232,000, and that, at that rate, the population would double itself in three hundred and seventy-five years. A slow increase, certainly, compared with England, where the births, in the three years ending 1800, were to the persons alive as 1 in 36, and the deaths as 1 to 49, and where, consequently, the nation would double itself in one hundred and sixty years (or taking the enumeration of 1811 as more correct, where the population would be doubled in eighty years): but not much slower than that of France, where, according to the statements of numbers in 1700 and 1790, about three hundred years would be required to double the inhabitants. It has been estimated that the population in some more favourable districts would double itself in fifty years. One inference cannot fail to be drawn from the register to which I have referred; that the births and deaths, though they nearly approach each other, are low, compared with the existing numbers; and that, consequently, the climate is healthy, and the marriages not very prolific, as far as this district is concerned.