Tower Hamlets which have 65 churches and 68,000 sittings. The census tables contain many materials for an inferential argument with regard to the size of our new churches, but it is hardly necessary to pursue the matter further, because we have ample direct evidence bearing upon the point. The Metropolis Church Building Society has assisted in the erection of 85 churches, which contain 106,000 sittings, or an average of 1,247 each. The Church Building Commissioners have aided 520 churches, and have thus assisted in providing 565,780 sittings, which would give an average of 1,088 each. Even Mr. Mann himself admits, with amusing _naïveté_, that “for many reasons the churches in large towns are constructed of considerable size, and rarely with accommodation for less than 1,000 persons!” [Report page clxii.] Precisely the same reasoning will apply to the Church extension of the rural districts; and the reader who has duly weighed the facts just stated will be little disposed to doubt that in both cases the average size of modern churches is at least double that of the churches which were in existence prior to 1801. On that hypothesis it would be found by an easy arithmetical problem that the capacity of town churches, in 1801, was 420 sittings, and of country ones, 276. The increase in the former class would thus have been 1,086,960 sittings, and in the latter 775,008—making together 1,861,968. Probably it was much more; but at all events the calculation omits a very important element, namely, the new sittings which have been obtained by the enlargement or the re-arrangement of old fabrics. From the statistics of above a score of Church Building Societies, it would appear that for every additional structure at least two old ones are rebuilt or enlarged. There must thus have been at least 5,000 of these cases; and though there are no accessible data on which to calculate the amount of new accommodation in this manner afforded, it must have been very considerable. On the whole, therefore, we may safely adopt the statistics of the Incorporated Society for Building and Enlarging Churches as our guide. This society has laboured impartially for the advantage of town and country; and up to the year 1851 it had assisted in erecting 884 new churches, and in rebuilding or enlarging 2,174 old ones. The total amount of new sittings it had thus been instrumental in providing was 835,000; so that each new church would _represent_ an increase of accommodation to the extent of 944 sittings. As, however, the society probably assisted the more urgent cases, it would perhaps be safer to assume that each new church has only represented an increase of 850 new sittings—in other words, that the new churches not assisted by the society represent about 800 each. The result will then be as follows:—