next page he proves that this is not the case. The population of the Pays de Vaud, M. Muret estimates at 113000, (I here transcribe from Mr. M.), of which 76000 are adults; 76000 is rather more than two-thirds of 113000, there is of course only one-third of the population that have not arrived at this period; who these are Mr. M. has just informed us, they are the children beneath the age of sixteen, so that the adults are reckoned to be all above sixteen; and Mr.M. uses as synonymous the terms adult and marriageable.---I hope he has not often attempted to impose on his readers in this manner. must have been known to him, when he spoke, of the marriageable age in Switzerland, that it would not convey the idea of a lad of sixteen, and it was incumbent on him not to have misled the public.

It

Among the 76000 adults, there are 19000 subsisting marriages, consequently 38000 mar. ried persons, or exactly the half. Besides these, there are 9000 widows and widowers.*

This estimate for the whole country does with the impression the statement respect ing the people of Berne was calculated to make.

away

* Page 277.

and there is still another circumstance which proves that celibacy was not more common in Switzerland than in other European states. In the neighbouring country of France, which Mr. M. represents as being as much disposed as the Swiss are averse to marriage, there were, according to M, Peuchet, 1451063 males, about the middle of the revolution; the account was published in 1800, in an essay, entitled, Essai d'une Statitisque Generale. At the same period, the author calculates, there were five millions of males in the whole, between the ages of 18 and 50*. If to the 1451063 males of the military age, be added the youths between 16 and 18, and the old men above 50; and if to this be also added the larger proportion of unmarried men who composed the armies of France, and who fell in the unprecedented conflict which continued to the middle of the revolution, the proportion of unmarried persons in France and Switzerland will be found nearly equal.

But I am unwilling to press this subject any further, for the statements of Mr. M. are so directly opposite to each other, that it is impossible. to ascertain his sentiments. After writing seve

* Page 287.

#

ral pages, and drawing inferences from the facts related, with a view to prove that the preventive check operated very forcibly in Switzerland, our author gallops away to the Lac de Joux, a few stages from Berne, where he forgets the preventive check, and enters into a discussion with his landlady on his doctrines of population. This good lady, who seems to have embraced the general principles advanced by Mr. M., is very far from charging the Swiss with apathy, on the contrary, she laments with much bitterness that boys and girls were marrying who ought to have been at school; and she told Mr. M., if this habit of early marriages continued, they should always be wretched, and distressed for subsistence.*

Dismissing this good lady, our author presently after meets with a labourer, who had a turn for politics, and to whom Mr. M. pays some handsome compliments; in his opinion, early marriages were le vice du pays; and that a law ought to be made, restraining men from entering into the marriage state before they were forty years of age, and then allowing it only with "des vielles filles."

As these statements are wholly irreconcilable with what is said of the city of Berne, and as the chapter does not afford matter for any further observations, I pass on.

Of the Effects of Epidemic Years on Population.

IT is an axiom with Mr. Malthus, of universal application, that an epidemic disease, or any other calamity, that takes off at a stroke part of the population of a country, not only makes room for, but invites to, new marriages; and the number of unmarried youths of both sexes are represented as being in every country so great, that the remnant left by the most destructive plague, is sufficient to reoccupy every place made vacant, and their willingness to do so is so general, that in a very few years not a trace of the mischief inflicted can be found. So important is this circumstance to Mr. M's. doctrine, that he publishes a table from Susmilch to prove its truth. "The way," says our author, "in which these periods of mortality affect all the general proportions of births, deaths, and marriages, is strikingly illustrated in the table for Prussia and Lithuania, from the

year 1692 to the year 1757."* As the table is interesting, I have copied it.

* Page 252.