and the power of moving from place to place, obfcure and confuse our view. We lofe fight of a truth, which before appeared completely obvious; and, in a most unaccountable manner, attribute to the aggregate quantity of land a power of fupporting people beyond comparison greater than the fum of all its parts.

CHAP. II.

Of the Checks to Population in Sweden.

SWEDEN is in many respects in a state similar to that of Norway. A very large proportion of its population is in the fame manner employed in agriculture; and in most parts of the country the married labourers who work for the farmers, like the housemen of Norway, have a certain portion of land for their principal maintenance, while the young men and women that are unmarried live as fervants in the farmers' families. This ftate of things however is not fo complete and general as in Norway; and from this caufe, added to the greater extent and population of the country, the superior fize of the towns, and the greater variety of employment, it has not occasioned in the fame degree the prevalence of the preventive check to population; and confequently the pofitive check has operated with more force, or the mortality has been greater.

According

According to a paper published by M. Wargentin in the Mémoires abrégés de l'Académie Royale des Sciences de Stockholm," the yearly average mortality in all Sweden, for nine years ending in 1663, was to the population as I to 34. M. Wargentin furnished Dr. Price with a continuance of these tables, and an average of 21 years gives a result of 1 to 343, nearly the fame. This is undoubtedly a very great mortality, confidering the large proportion of the population in Sweden, which is employed in agriculture. It appears from fome calculations in Cantzlaer's account of Sweden, that the inhabitants of the towns are to the inhabitants of the country only as 1 to 13; whereas in wellpeopled countries the proportion is often as i to 3, or above. The fuperior mortality of towns therefore could not much affect the general proportion of Sweden,

• 1 vol. 4to, printed at Paris, 1772.

bId p. 27.

< Price's Obferv. on Revers. Paym. vol. ii, p. 126.

a Mémoires pour fervir à la connoiffance des affaires politiques et économiques du Royaume de Suède, 4to, 1776, ch. vi, p. 187. This work is confidered as very correct in its information, and is in great credit at Stockholm.

e Suffimilch's Gottliche Ordnung, vol. i, c. ii, fect. xxxiv, edit. 1798.

I

The average mortality of villages according to Suffmilch is 1 in 40. In Pruffia and Pomerania, which include a number of great and unhealthy towns, and where the inhabitants of the towns are to the inhabitants of the country as I to 4, the mortality is less than 1 in 37. The mortality in Norway, as has been mentioned before, is 1 in 48, which is in a very extraor dinary degree less than in Sweden, though the inhabitants of the towns in Norway bear a greater proportion to the inhabitants of the country than in Sweden. The towns in Sweden are indeed larger and more unhealthy than in Norway; but there is no reafon to think, that the country is naturally more unfavourable to the duration of human life. The mountains of Norway are in general not habitable. The only peopled parts of the country are the vallies. Many of thefe vallies are deep and narrow clefts in the mountains; and the cultivated spots in the bottom, furrounded as they are by almost perpendicular cliffs of a prodigious

Suffmilch's Gottliche Ordnung, vol. i, ch. ii, seệt. xxxv, b Id. vol. iii, p. 60.

p. 91.

с

Thaarup's Statistik der Danischen Monarchie, vol. ii, tab. ii, p. 5. 1765.

height,

height, which intercept the rays of the fun for many hours, do not seem as if they could be fo healthy as the more expofed and drier foil of

Sweden.

It is difficult therefore entirely to account for the mortality of Sweden, without supposing, that the habits of the people, and the continual cry of the government for an increase of subjects, tend to prefs the population too hard against the limits of fubfiftence, and confequently to produce diseases, which are the neceffary effect of poverty and bad nourishment; and this, from obfervation, appears to be really the case.

Sweden does not produce food fufficient for its population. Its annual want in the article of grain, according to a calculation made from the years 1768 and 1772, is 440,000 tuns.*

Some of thefe vallies are ftrikingly picturefque. The principal road from Chriftiania to Drontheim leads for nearly 180 English miles through a continued valley of this kind, by the fide of a very fine river, which in one part stretches out into the extensive lake Miofen. I am inclined to believe, that there is not any river in all Europe, the courfe of which affords fuch a conftant fucceffion of beautiful and Romantic fcenery. It goes under different names in different parts. The verdure in the Norway vallies is peculiarly foft, the foliage of the trees luxuriant, and in fummer no traces appear of a northern climate.

▸ Mémoires du Royaume de Suède, table xvii, p. 174.