at first. p. 88. This is quite inoffensive, and would only imply that she began to doubt whether she should succeed in converting him. But the real meaning is—as we have rendered it-that she not only failed to convert him, but had herself become a little less confident in her own belief-sûre de son fait-than she was before.

The following version also contradicts the meaning of the original. Jacquemont calls the Hindoostanee a contemptible patois, not worth learning' the language of the court and courtiers.'-p. 90. It surprises one that the language of court and courtiers, generally considered the most correct and polite, should, in this instance, be a contemptible jargon.' The French is, ' de cour et des courtiers,'-i. e. ' lawyers and brokers.'

The following passage must perplex an English reader :—

'In half an hour Shah Mohammed dismissed his court; and I retired in procession with the resident. The drums beat in the fields as I passed before the troops with my dressing-gown of worked muslin. Why were you not present to enjoy the honours conferred upon your progeny?'-vol. i. p. 190.

Again

At Lahore, I lived in a little palace of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments; a battalion of infantry was on duty near me; the drums beat in the fields when I put my head out of doors; and when I walked in the cool of the evening, in the alleys of my garden, fountains played around me by thousands!'-vol. ii. p. 216.

One cannot conceive how drums beating in the fields can have any thing to do with the honours paid Jacquemont in the cities of Delhi and Lahore; but the French phrase, Les tambours battirent aux champs quand je passais, means no more than that when he passed the guard was turned out, and the drums beat a salute.

In the same way, when Jacquemont tells a story of a poor Swiss professor, who, having proved that the history of William Tell was a fable of the eleventh century, was condemned to death for having overturned a belief which is one of the dearest heirlooms of a Swiss peasant; the translator makes him add that, 'fortunately being contumacious,' he escaped with his life.'-p. 290. One wonders why, if the error was so criminal, the being contumacious in it should have procured a mitigation of the punishment. The explanation is that absent offenders are condemned as 'contumaces-and Jacquemont meant to say, that being fortunately absent, he was condemned in effigy only, and so his life was saved.

We suppose these instances, selected at random, from the first half of the first volume, will satisfy our readers as to the qualifications of the translator in the niceties of the French idiom; and that they will agree in our opinion, that it would have been as well if, instead of criticising other people, he had employed himself in learning his own business.

ART.

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ART. III-1. Abstract of the Answers and Returns made pursuant to an Act passed in the eleventh year of his Majesty King George the Fourth, intituled An Act for the taking an Account of the Population of Great Britain, and the increase or diminution thereof.', Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 2nd April, 1833. 3 vols. folio.

2. Abstract of Returns under the Irish Population Acts-Enumeration, 1831. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 7th August, 1833.

3. Sur la Population de la Grande Bretagne. Par L. R. Villermé,

1834.

SUCH

UCH documents as those named at the head of our paper, however, generally interesting, are accessible to so few who are not members of the legislature, or of the government offices, that, we think our readers may be gratified by a short account of the nature of the inquiries which have been instituted and of their most important results.

When David numbered the people it was justly imputed to him as a sin, for he had done it in a spirit of pride and vain-glory; but the investigations, of which the results are here before us, were undertaken, in the first place, to enable the legislature to exercise an enlightened justice in their fiscal, political, and moral enactments; and, in the second place, to afford to individuals authentic data for the regulation of some of their most important mutual transactions. With these objects censuses of more or less detailed investigation have been instituted both by ancient and modern governments; but in no other age or nation has there been displayed such an analytical view of the whole frame of society, such an anatomical exhibition of the body politic, as these volumes present. It is obvious that in a series of such censuses, made at equal intervals of time, the value of each is increased by the power of comparing it with all the others; thus augmenting the probability of tracing the causes of difference, whether of good or evil, by observing what other variations are concomitant with each. For such comparison it becomes absolutely necessary that at each census the returns should be made from precisely the same subdivisions of districts, and again combined always into the same larger divisions.

The operation of the poor-laws has made the inhabitants of every place, maintaining its own poor, interested in accurately knowing their own boundaries; and from the overseers of every such place returns were required on four and twenty questions, comprising details which must have demanded considerable attention, and occasioned much personal trouble. And it is cre

ditable

ditable to the zeal and intelligence both of questioners and respondents, that no place has been known finally to have omitted making due return, though the number of such places amounts to 16,655, besides 11,301 returns on the subject of parish registers.' To digest, and reduce into order, so as to render easily accessible such an unwieldy bulk of information, required a mind at once strong, and clear, and indefatigable: rightly, therefore, was the task remitted to Mr. Rickman, who had, for thirty years, so successfully laboured in the same field-to whom experience had shown the defects of the three previous decennial investigations,to whose suggestions much of the present amended mode of inquiry has been owing,t-and to whom we are indebted for a most lucid arrangement of the consequent returns-together with calculations, inferences, and results both in a tabular form and in the important observations contained in his preface, besides above four thousand three hundred notes scattered through the volumes,passimque spargere lucem.

Mr. Rickman's preface is indeed a curious document in more ways than one. We once heard an eminent lawyer declare that a clause of an Act of Parliament, in which the arrangement of the words was the best that could be, gave him as much pleasure in the perusal as the finest stanza of Spenser's. In the same way everything which is perfect in its kind, and consummately contrived to answer its purpose, may convey to one who understands its skilfulness, a pleasure similar to that with which we contemplate what is more distinctively denominated a work of art. Such a sort of satisfaction have we derived from Mr. Rickman's preface. It is not alone remarkable in respect of its scientific merits, but is also worthy to be studied as exhibiting perhaps the most perfect example which is anywhere to be found of practical ability in setting on foot a statistical inquiry of enormous extent.

It is curious to trace the devices, and interesting to contemplate the success, with which a statistician sitting in his closet could take order for the execution of a project which required that twentyfour millions of mankind should, in the course of one day, render

After noticing the ambiguity of the terms parish, parochial chapelry, &c., and another class of doubtful parishes created by the act of 1818, for the building of additional churches in populous parishes, Mr. Rickman says, for any general purposes the number of parishes and parochial chapelries, in England and Wales, may safely be taken at 10,700. The number of places in England and Wales, of which the population is distinctly stated in the present abstract, is 15,609; the number of parishes in Scotland is 948; of population returns, 1046.'— Pref. p. 18.

See his elaborate statements in the 'Minutes of Evidence taken before the Committee on the Bill for taking an account of the Population of Great Britain, and of the increase and diminution thereof,' ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 11th May, 1830; and again before the Committee on the Re-committed Bill,' ordered to be printed, 26th May, 1830.

such

such an account of themselves as these returns contain; and dry as the faculties are supposed to be which minister to statistical research, when we see how much knowledge of human nature, and what an active fancy, were required to conceive all the crosses and hinderances, and provide against all the errors which might have attended this investigation, one is tempted to think that more of that knowledge, and more of imagination, would not be needed for a writer of a fiction to figure to himself a succession of probable incidents. Mr. Rickman's knowledge of human nature seems to have taught him never unnecessarily to trust to the common sense of any man, for doing in the best way any act, however simple and mechanical. Thus the overseer, who is to go from house to house, is furnished not only with a schedule to be filled up, but with a formula of the scratches which he is to make with a hard black-lead pencil or ink,' as the surest way of numbering the inhabitants, and he is to carry the printed formula papers in a pasteboard or other convenient cover; and if ink is used by the inquirer, let him also use blotting-paper.' " Everybody knows that would be the remark of many people; but Mr. Rickman was well aware that there is no matter so plain and elementary of which it can be safely predicated that everybody knows that;' and he was likewise sensible that it was only by forecasting the progress of such an inquiry at every step, and at every stumble, that its multitudinous results could be brought out with accuracy and completeness.

The nature of the information sought, and so successfully obtained, on the subject of population, will be best understood by specifying the heading of each column in the returns : *-1st, the name of the place with its designation, as parish, township, hamlet, extra-parochial, &c. ; 2nd, area in acres ;+ 3rd, inhabited houses; 4th, families; 5th, houses building; 6th, other uninhabited houses; 7th, families employed chiefly in agriculture; 8th, trade, manufactures, and handicraft; 9th, all other families; 10th, males; 11th, females; 12th, total of persons; 13th, males above twenty years old; 14th, number of such occupying land and employing labourers; 15th, number of such not employing labourers; 16th, number of males, above twenty years old, employed as labourers in agriculture; 17th, in manufactures, and in making manufacturing machinery; 18th, in retail trade or handicraft, as masters

The formula would have been improved by the numbering of the columns (which, in his Preface, Mr. Rickman has himself adopted), as saving circumlocution in the discussion of the subjects.

It would have made the column containing the number of acres more instructive if that had been followed by one expressing the annual value at which the real property of the place was assessed in 1815, which is given in the comparative account of the four censuses, ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 19th Oct, 1831.

or

or workmen; 19th, as capitalists, bankers, professional and other educated men; 20th, males above twenty employed in labour not agricultural; 21st, other males above twenty years (except servants); 22nd, male servants above twenty; 23rd, male servants under twenty; 24th, female servants.

Before proceeding to notice the most interesting results of these inquiries, it is desirable, in order to place under one view the scope of the whole investigation, to state here the nature of the information sought and obtained from the parish registers of England and Wales. Each officiating minister was requested to state,-1st, the number of baptisms and burials appearing in his register in the several years from 1821 to 1830, both inclusive, distinguishing males from females; 2ndly, the number of mar riages in each of those years; 3rdly, the ages of the deceased, from 1813* to 1830, both inclusive; 4thly, the number of illegitimate children born in the parish or chapelry during 1830, distinguishing male and female children; 5thly, any explanatory remarks are requested on any of the subjects, particularly on the annual average number of births, marriages, and deaths, which may have taken place without being registered. Such, then, are the perquisitions that have been made; and we shall proceed to notice some of the most curious and interesting results.

First, with regard to territorial division:-Mr. Rickman justly deprecates any alteration of the boundaries of those places from which the returns have hitherto been made, as tending to diminish the value of the comparative results of different censuses. But this seems no reason for allowing such divisions to continue in reference to other subjects, where it produces effects of unbalanced evil. What Mr. Rickman seems alone to contemplate is the circumstance where parishes and counties are not conterminous. In that case, the inconvenience, it must be admitted, is not of comparative magnitude. But where portions of counties are insulated in other counties, or separated by an intervening county, the evils are of so enormous a magnitude, that, even if a change in their political and juridical allocation should disturb, as far as they were concerned, the results of statistical investigations, yet these ought to succumb to considerations of paramount interest. Happily, however, there is no necessary collision of interests. The statistical boundaries may remain unaltered whilst the political and juridical districts may be consolidated with infinite advantage, just as the circuits of the judges, the diocesan divisions, and the justiciary districts are efficient, each to their own purpose, without any mutual interference.

*The Act (52 Geo. III. c. 146) requiring the age of the deceased to be inserted in the register of burial, did not take effect till 'from and after 31st Dec. 1812.'