No. of Churches. Sittings. 1801 11,379 3,024,615 Decennial increase: 1811 65 55,250 1821 114 96,900 1831 325 276,250 1841 785 667,250 1851 1,409 1,197,650 Total Increase 2,698 2,293,300 Total 14,077 5,317,915 Turning now to the Dissenting tables, we shall find that Mr. Mann’s formula leads to still more absurd results than when it is applied to the churches. It has, however, the curious felicity of operating in the two cases in a manner diametrically opposite; for while it robs the Church of more than half the new accommodation which she has provided, it obligingly credits Dissent with about the same number of sittings, to which it has not the ghost of a claim. It is the proper place to offer here a few remarks upon the mode which has been adopted for distributing the dateless buildings amongst the six periods. Every one is, of course, aware that in many cases “there is much virtue” in an average. In such problems as determining the number of letters which will be posted in a given year without being addressed, it operates with almost infallible certainty. But it must be clear that 2,428 out of 20,390 places could not have been returned without dates by mere accident. In a large proportion of cases the omission must have been intentional; and it is obvious that those cases would include very few new buildings. The enumerators, being all persons possessed of local knowledge, could have had no difficulty in determining whether a building had or had not been erected within the last ten, twenty, or thirty years. It would only be in cases where the structure was of what is called in ladies’ sometimes “a certain,” sometimes “an uncertain” age, that they would be unable to ascertain when it was erected or appropriated to public worship. The number of such instances would bear no relation whatever to the number having dates assigned. The case is wholly beyond the province of the Rule of Three; and to attempt to adjust the table by means of proportion is, on the face of it, unfair. Out of the 2,118 dateless churches, no fewer than 1,712 are relegated to the number of those erected before 1801, whereas of the 2,428 dateless meeting-houses, only 465 would be placed in the same category. In point of fact, however, there are not so many; for Mr. Mann has hit on a plan, which is a miracle of perverse ingenuity, in order to make the growth of Dissent during the half century look larger than ever. Ninety-nine persons out of a hundred would have applied the rule first to the churches, then to the meeting-houses, and then they would have added the results together. Mr.