After taking it for granted, that he has proved the equality of the two sexes in number, from the bills of mortality in London, he next supposes, as a consequence, that all the world is in the same predicament; that is, that an equal number of males and females is produced every where. Why Dr Arbuthnot, an eminent physician (which surely implies an informed naturalist) should imagine that this inference would hold, is what I am not able to account for. He should know, let us say, in the countries of the east, that fruits, flowers, trees, birds, fish, every blade of grass, is commonly different, and that man, in his appearance, diet, exercise, pleasure, government, and religion, is as widely different; why he should found the issue of an Asiatic, however, upon the bills of mortality in London, is to the full as absurd as to assert, that they do not wear either beard or whiskers in Syria, because that is not the case in London. I am well aware, that it maybe urged by those who permit themselves to say every thing, because they are not at pains to consider any thing, that the course of my argument will lead to a defence of polygamy in general, the supposed doctrine of the Thelypthora[190]. Such reflections as these, unless introduced for merriment, are below my animadversion; all I shall say on that topic is, that they who find encouragement to polygamy in Mr Madan’s book, the Thelypthora, have read it with a much more acute perception than perhaps I have done; and I shall be very much mistaken, if polygamy increases in England upon the principles laid down in the Thelypthora. England, says Dr Arbuthnot, enjoys an equality of both sexes, and, if it is not so, the inequality is so imperceptible, that no inconvenience has yet followed. What we have now to inquire is, Whether other nations, or the majority of them, are in the same situation? For, if we are to decide by this, and if we should happen to find, that, in other countries, there are invariably born three women to one man, the conclusion, in regard to that country, must be, that three women to one man was the proportion of one sex to the other, impressed at the creation _in semine_ of our first parent. I confess I am not fond of meddling with the globe _before_ the _deluge_. But as learned men seem inclined to think that Ararat and Euphrates are the mountain and river of antediluvian times, and that Mesopotamia, or Diarbekir, is the ancient situation of the terrestrial paradise, I cannot give Dr Arbuthnot’s argument fairer play[191], than to transport myself thither; and, in the same spot where the necessity was imposed of male and female being produced in equal numbers, inquire how that case stands now. The pretence that climates and times may have changed, the proportion cannot be admitted, since it has been taken for granted, that it exists in the bills of mortality in London, and governs them to this day; and, since it was founded on necessity, which must be eternal.