and more houses are built, the inhabitants must be distressed in some degree for room and subsistence.  Were the marriages in England, for the next eight or ten years, to be more prolifick than usual, or even were a greater number of marriages than usual to take place, supposing the number of houses to remain the same, instead of five or six to a cottage, there must be seven or eight, and this, added to the necessity of harder living, would probably have a very unfavourable effect on the health of the common people.

NEUMARK OF BRANDENBURGH

Proportion   Proportion
Annual Average   Births  Burials Marriages of Births to of Births to
Marriages    Burials
5 yrs to 1701    5,433    3,483  1,436      37 to 10    155 to 100
5 yrs to 1726    7,012    4,254  1,713      40 to 10    164 to 100
5 yrs to 1756    7,978    5,567  1,891      42 to 10    143 to 100

“Epidemics prevailed for six years, from 1736, to 1741, which checked the increase.”

DUKEDOM OF MAGDEBURGH

Proportion   Proportion
Annual Average   Births  Burials Marriages of Births to of Births to
Marriages    Burials
5 yrs to 1702    6,431   4,103   1,681      38 to 10    156 to 100
5 yrs to 1717    7,590   5,335   2,076      36 to 10    142 to 100
5 yrs to 1756    8,850   8,069   2,193      40 to 10    109 to 100

“The years 1738, 1740, 1750, and 1751, were particularly sickly.”

For further information on this subject, I refer the reader to Mr Suessmilch’s tables.  The extracts that I have made are sufficient to shew the periodical, though irregular, returns of sickly seasons, and it seems highly probable that a scantiness of room and food was one of the principal causes that occasioned them.

It appears from the tables that these countries were increasing rather fast for old states, notwithstanding the occasional seasons that prevailed.  Cultivation must have been improving, and marriages, consequently, encouraged.  For the checks to population appear to have been rather of the positive, than of the preventive kind.  When from a prospect of increasing plenty in any country, the weight that represses population is in some degree removed, it is highly probable that the motion will be continued beyond the operation of the cause that first impelled it.  Or, to be more particular, when the increasing produce of a country, and the increasing demand for labour, so far ameliorate the condition of the labourer as greatly to encourage marriage, it is probable that the custom of early marriages will continue till the population of the country has gone beyond the increased produce, and sickly seasons appear to be the natural and necessary consequence.  I should expect, therefore, that those countries where subsistence was increasing sufficiency at times to encourage population but not to answer all its demands, would be more subject to periodical epidemics than those where the population could more completely accommodate itself to the average produce.