element of conjecture appears to play a large part in the calculations of the Italian statistical department. Such as they are, they make the capital of Italy only a little in excess of two thousand millions sterling, about one-fifth of the sum with which Mr. Giffen credits the United Kingdom. By far the most interesting parliamentary paper of the quarter is the Census of England and Wales, 1891, Preliminary Report (Command Paper 6422, fol., 138 pp., 18. 3d.). Every one is by this time acquainted with the fact that the population of England and Wales on the 6th of April last was almost exactly twenty-nine millions, and that this is seven hundred thousand below the number which is called, even by the Registrar-General himself, "the official estimate." "Such differences," the Registrar-General observes, "between estimates of this kind and the reality are unavoidable when the interval between two consecutive enumerations is so long as a decennium." It would be much more to the purpose to say that such differences between estimates of this kind and the reality are unavoidable when population does not continue increasing at a uniform rate. For the "official estimate" was no estimate at all, but merely the number to which the population would have grown if it had continued growing at exactly the same rate as between 1871 and 1881. The growth of the populalation depends, of course, upon the excess of births over deaths, minus the excess of emigrants over immigrants. The statistics with regard to emigration and immigration were so incomplete in the last decade that the Registrar may perhaps be excused for having made no use of them; but why he should have made no use of the fact, established by the machinery of his own office, that the excess of births over deaths was 288,782 below what it would have been if it had “been in the same proportion to the population as it was in the preceding decennium," is a secret the answer to which is known only within the walls of Somerset House. The diminution in the rate of increase from 14:36 per cent. in 1871-1881 to 11.65 per cent. in 1881-1891 is a very satisfactory one. It is not so much as to suggest any national decadence, and it is sufficient to calm the fears of the ultra-Malthusians, since it reduces the absolute increase from 3,262,173 in 1871-1881 to 3,026,579 in 1881-1891. The facts which the Report reveals as to the changes in the distribution of the population are also of a fairly satisfactory character. The following table, now printed for the first time, shows at a glance the principal changes which have taken place during the present century. NUMBER OF PERSONS PER THOUSAND OF THE POPULATION OF ENGLAND AND WALES IN NINETEEN DIFFERENT DIVISIONS OF THE COUNTRY AT EACH CENSUS, 1801-1891. London and suburbs 1 West' East 5 1801 1811 1821 1831 1841 1851 1861 1871 1881 1891 1345 139 3 141 7 145 5 149 4 157 8 1699 180-9 1933 204 6 260 268 264 254 245 236 236 234 224 22.2 18.1 189 196 198 190 189 18-2 185 190 191 24.8 24.3 23·7 226 22:3 226 232 23.1 221 229 Wales without Glamorgan 514 50-2 498 475 452 419 384 349 317 278 South-west 1238 120 1 118 1 114 7 109 4 100 6 91.8 82.9 715 65'8 860 834 804 780 741 695 657 616 566 520 108 4 104 2 103 5 1000 953 918 81.8 752 677 62.8 773 740 721 686 656 621 575 543 498 476 28.8 28.7 275 253 247 243 238 216 212 200 29 9 29 1 278 25'8 234 225 209 196 186 17:5 48.2 487 47.5 471 460 441 429 420 443 454 378 394 401 422 464 502 562 582 600 59-8 21.3 220 220 22.8 23-2 237 236 237 23′9 244 76.8 82.6 88.9 97.9 106.7 115 3 122 8 1254 134-2 136-4 West Riding of Yorkshire 652 660 683 718 742 750 76-2 816 846 84-9 Durham, Newcastle, &c. 262 253 255 265 290 319 367 448 494 526 Monmouthshire 6.1 7.1 7:3 8.1 94 9.8 9.8 9.6 9.0 9.4 Glamorgan 8.3 8.7 8.9 9.5 111 13:3 16.2 17.8 19.9 23.8 East & South Midlands Lancashire 11 1000 1000 1000 1000 1000 1000 1000 1000 1000 1000 The greatest change of the century obviously is the disproportionate growth of six not very large areas-London, Lancashire, the West Riding of Yorkshire, Staffordshire with Birmingham, Durham with The Registration Division of London, together with the whole of "extrametropolitan" Middlesex and "extra-metropolitan" Surrey, and also the registration districts of Bromley, Dartford, Gravesend, West Ham, and Romford. * Kent "extra-metropolitan" less Bromley, Dartford, and Gravesend registration districts. * Somerset, Wilts, Dorset, Devon, and Cornwall. Warwickshire without Birmingham and Aston registration districts, Worcestershire without King's Norton registration district, Shropshire, Herefordshire, and Gloucestershire. 5 Essex without West Ham and Romford registration districts, Suffolk, Norfolk, Lincolnshire, and Cambridgeshire. Berkshire, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire, Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire, and Rutland. East Riding and North Riding without Middlesbrough, Stokesley and Guisbrough registration districts. Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Northumberland, without Newcastle and Tynemouth registration districts. Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, and Derbyshire. 10 Staffordshire with Birmingham, Aston, and King's Norton registration districts. "County of Durham with Newcastle, Tynemouth, Middlesbrough, Stokesley, and Guisbrough registration districts. Newcastle and Middlesbrough, and Glamorgan. These six areas, which together form less than one-sixth of the total superficies of England and Wales, contained a little more than a third of the population, 348.8 per thousand, in 1801; but in 1891 they contained a great deal more than half the population, 559 per thousand. Comparison of the figures furnished by the last four censuses shows that only one of the six areas is gaining on the rest of the country faster than ever; that four of them are gaining less rapidly than they did ten and twenty years ago, and that one has ceased to gain altogether, and has begun to fall behind the rest of the country. The area which has been gaining faster than ever is Glamorgan. In 1801 the population of this county was 8.3 per thousand of the population of England and Wales. In 1861 it was 16-2; in 1871, 17.8 (a rise of 1.6); in 1881 it was 19.9 (a rise of 2.1), and now in 1891 it is 23-8 (a rise of very nearly 4). The four areas which are still gaining, but gaining at a less rapid rate than between 1871 and 1881, are London, Lancashire, the West Riding of Yorkshire, and the Durham district. In the case of London the slackening of the rate of gain is very slight, and the gain in the last ten years remains greater than the gain between 1861 and 1871, though it is less than the gain between 1871 and 1881. In 1861, 1699 per thousand of the whole population of England and Wales lived in Middlesex, Surrey, the north-west corner of Kent, and the south-west corner of Essex. In 1871, the proportion had risen to 180-9 per thousand; in 1881, to 1933; and in 1891, it is 204-6; so that the gain in the last three decades has been 11, 124, and 11.3, which suggests a fluctuation rather than a decline in the rate of gain. In the case of Durham and Lancashire, the slackening is considerable and continuous. In 1861, the proportion of population living in the county of Durham, together with the adjoining registration districts of Newcastle, Tynemouth, Middlesbrough, Stokesley, and Guisbrough, was 36.7 per thousand. An addition of 8.1 was made in the next ten years, but between 1871 and 1881 the addition was only 46, and in the last ten years it has further diminished to 3.2. The Lancashire population was 122.8 per thousand of the whole in 1861. In the next ten years, which include the period of the American civil war, the proportion rose only to 125'4 (an increase of 2.6). In the next ten years there was, of course, a revival, and the increase was 8.8. But in the last ten years it has sunk again to 2.2 per thousand, actually less than the increase between 1861 and 1871. The West Riding of Yorkshire has not gained upon the rest of the country in the last ninety years so fast as Lancashire or Durham, for it contained 65.2 per thousand of the total population in 1801 and only contains 84·9 now. But between 1861 and 1871 the proportionate gain was 5'4. In the next ten years it was only 3, and in the last ten years it fell further to 0.3. The last of the six areas, the registration county of Stafford along with Birmingham and its suburbs, which grew up from having 37.8 per thousand of the whole population in 1801 to having 56-2 per thousand in 1861, has not merely slackened its rate of gain, but has ceased to gain altogether. In 1871 it had 58.2 per thousand, in 1881 it had 60, but in 1891 it has only 59-8 per thousand. The district has become a comparatively declining one. To recapitulate then, while the gain of London has not altered to any great extent, and that of Glamorgan has increased, the gain of Lancashire and Durham has greatly diminished, that of the West Riding has sunk to a very small amount, and that of the Staffordshire and Birmingham district has disappeared altogether. No new manufacturing and mining districts, except Glamorgan, seem to be growing up to counterbalance the diminished growth of the older ones. There is a slight increase of gain in Cheshire and Monmouth, but a larger decrease of gain in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire. The diminished gain of the manufacturing and mining districts has been counterbalanced not by a greater gain anywhere, but by a diminished loss on the part of the great irregularly shaped area which makes up the Eastern, East and South Midland, Western and South-Western counties. This area, which contained 3957 per thousand of the population of England and Wales in 1801, declined to 297 by 1861. In the next ten years it fell to 2741. In 1881 it had further fallen to 245 7. In 1891 the proportion is still 228 4, so that though the decline between 1871 and 1881 was more than that which took place between 1861 and 1871, the fall in the last ten years has been much less than either. Dividing the immense area with which we are dealing into its four quarters, we find that, as might be expected, it is the South-Western counties which have undergone the greatest decline since 1801, and also that the greater part of the diminution of the decline in the last ten years is in that quarter. In 1801 the South-Western counties, that is to say, Somerset, Wilts, Dorset, Devon, and Cornwall, contained 123.8 per thousand of the population-very nearly an eighth. To-day they have but 65-8 per thousand, not much more than a fifteenth. But the decline in the last ten years (5-7 per thousand) was only half of the decline (11.4 per thousand) which took place between 1871 and 1881, and was much less than that which took place between 1861 and 1871. To arrive at any very definite and trustworthy conclusions as to the distribution of the population between town and country seems impossible. Every one knows, of course, that the towns grow much faster than the country; but how much faster, and whether faster lately than formerly, there is little to show. At present 717 per thousand of the population live in urban sanitary districts, as against 6791 in 1881 and 6181 in 1871. If these figures indicate the actual state of things, they show that the gain of the urban population has recently greatly diminished, but no dependence can be placed upon them, as the increase of the population of urban sanitary districts depends very much on the activity of local urban authorities in applying for extensions of their districts, and on the readiness of the Local Government Board to grant extensions and to create new urban districts. It must also be remembered that, owing to the increasing tendency of urban populations to scatter themselves over a wide area, the number of townspeople living under rural authorities is constantly increasing. It is also difficult to discover whether the tendencies of the time are most favourable to the growth of the large, the small, or the middlesized towns. The Registrar-General has furnished a table which makes it appear that in the last ten years it has been the middle-sized towns of from fifty to a hundred thousand inhabitants which have increased the most, and that the six towns of over a quarter of a million inhabitants have actually increased, not only a great deal slower than the rest of the towns, but a little slower than the whole country. But he warns his readers that the table probably does not represent the true state of the case, and it certainly does not. In it many of the rapidly growing suburbs of the great towns are placed among the middle-sized towns, and divided from the great towns of which they form a part. Suburbs and parts of towns, such as West Ham, Salford, Croydon, Birkenhead, Aston-Manor, Tottenham, Leyton, and Willesden, appear among the towns of fifty to two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, and swell the percentage of increase in that class, instead of in that of the towns of over a quarter of a million inhabitants. When these suburbs are put in their proper place, the increase of the largest towns appears very much greater than in the table. In the table, London is credited with an increase of 10-4 per cent., whereas the metropolitan police district increased 18.1 per cent. Liverpool is actually credited with a decrease of 6.3 per cent., whereas the registration districts of Liverpool, Toxteth Park, West Derby, Birkenhead, and the Wirral increased 10 per cent. Manchester's increase is set down in the table as 9.3 per cent., but the registration districts of Manchester, Salford, Chorlton, Barton, and Prestwich 1 These are not the figures for the areas which are now urban, but for the actual urban areas of 1881 and 1871. The plan of giving the population of the present areas of course slightly exaggerates the town population of past periods. |