the way in which it is directed.  The knowledge and habits of the people, and other temporary causes, particularly the degree of civil liberty and equality existing at the time, must always have great influence in exciting and directing this spirit.) And a greater proportional yearly increase of produce will almost invariably be followed by a greater proportional increase of population.  But, besides this great cause, which would naturally give the excess of births above burials greater at the end of Queen Elizabeth’s reign than in the middle of the present century, I cannot help thinking that the occasional ravages of the plague in the former period must have had some tendency to increase this proportion.  If an average of ten years had been taken in the intervals of the returns of this dreadful disorder, or if the years of plague had been rejected as accidental, the registers would certainly give the proportion of births to burials too high for the real average increase of the population.  For some few years after the great plague in 1666, it is probable that there was a more than usual excess of births above burials, particularly if Dr Price’s opinion be founded, that England was more populous at the revolution (which happened only twenty-two years afterwards) than it is at present.

Mr King, in 1693, stated the proportion of the births to the burials throughout the Kingdom, exclusive of London, as 115 to 100.  Dr Short makes it, in the middle of the present century, 111 to 100, including London.  The proportion in France for five years, ending in 1774, was 117 to 100.  If these statements are near the truth; and if there are no very great variations at particular periods in the proportions, it would appear that the population of France and England has accommodated itself very nearly to the average produce of each country.  The discouragements to marriage, the consequent vicious habits, war, luxury, the silent though certain depopulation of large towns, and the close habitations, and insufficient food of many of the poor, prevent population from increasing beyond the means of subsistence; and, if I may use an expression which certainly at first appears strange, supercede the necessity of great and ravaging epidemics to repress what is redundant.  Were a wasting plague to sweep off two millions in England, and six millions in France, there can be no doubt whatever that, after the inhabitants had recovered from the dreadful shock, the proportion of births to burials would be much above what it is in either country at present.

In New Jersey, the proportion of births to deaths on an average of seven years, ending in 1743, was as 300 to 100.  In France and England, taking the highest proportion, it is as 117 to 100.  Great and astonishing as this difference is, we ought not to be so wonder-struck at it as to attribute it to the miraculous interposition of heaven.  The causes of it are not remote, latent and mysterious; but near us, round about us, and open to the investigation