A Comparative View of the Mortality of the Human Species, at All Ages. Black William
We next descend to a fertile hive of husbandmen and artizans, laborious drudges in mechanical trades, arts, manufactories, and commerce: to a numerous class of retailers or venders of merchandize, and of the necessaries of life: to soldiers, sailors, domestick servants: to no inconsiderable multitude buried under ground, and occupied in digging metals and fuel from the bowels of the earth: to infirm, cripples, diseased, puerperal, aged; and to many other links and gradations, which must be greatly diversified by the variety in governments, religion, climate, national genius, and other causes which will occur to philosophers, and to gentlemen of reflection. It is of essential importance, not only in an enlarged political, but also in a medicinal view, to contemplate these constituent portions of a community.
The inhabitants crowded into Cities and towns, and those dispersed in small villages, and in the Country, constitute other large groups of society. If the result of Susmilch’s researches and materials, collected throughout Germany can be depended upon as a criterion for other European nations, the inhabitants in the country are to those in cities and towns as 3½ to 1. Great cities, if we except Rome and Constantinople, are of modern date in most kingdoms of Europe. In the ninth century, a few towns had been built in Germany; but in England, corporations and considerable towns are posterior to the Norman invasion. Cities, associated communities, and towns, during the religious frenzy of crusading, and after the termination of this epidemical distemper, were asylums from aristocratic tyranny; and when of moderate size, are seats of politeness, refinement, emulation, arts, and society; but when overgrown, they check population; they are drains of the human species, the graves of infants, and nurseries of vices. Unfortunately also for succeeding generations, numerous cities, towns, and harbours, have been founded upon low, unhealthy situations, surrounded by morasses and hills. Most cities seem to have grown to maturity by accident and time: their streets are narrow, irregular, not sufficiently ventilated; and the inhabitants absurdly and perniciously thronged together. There are moderate-sized towns, and even country districts, whose situations are so noxious, as to make the burials exceed the births. We need not travel to new uncultivated continents and islands, nor to rank tropical climates for proofs: we have only to consult Dr. Short’s Registers of several parts in this kingdom.
The assemblages of the human race are greatly diversified by their Ages. During nine months only of uterine incubation, and from the most minute tadpole, an infant at birth has grown to between sixteen inches and two feet; and from five to ten pounds in weight. After birth, the increase is slower; and it proceeds to shoot upwards a few inches annually, but not always in successive progression, and to make additions to its weight and dimensions. Between puberty and twenty-one years of age, man has generally attained to the summit of his altitude; females, rather earlier; and those still earlier who inhabit warm climates. Excluding that fragment of pigmy mortals, the Laplanders, between five and six feet in height is the most universal and mean standard of the human race; and their gravity in various gradations, from eight to twenty stone; in both which respects, females usually fall short of males. Nature, however, is not limited to one model of altitude or gravity; she sometimes deviates into extravagancies, producing human giants, from nine, down to diminutive dwarfs of two feet; together with shapeless monsters wallowing in fat, and weighing upwards of forty stone. Let us next endeavour to form arithmetical estimates of the human race, at different ages. Davenant calculates the inhabitants of England (not including Scotland) at five million and a half; and their sundry ages as follows:—Under one year of age, 170,000; under five years of age, 820,000; under ten years of age, 1,500,000; under sixteen years of age, 2,240,000: from sixteen years of age to the extreme of existence, 3,260,000; of which number he estimates 600,000, or about one ninth part of the whole community, to have passed sixty years of age; and of which veteran group the males constitute 270,000; the females, 330,000. Dr. Price supposes nearly an equal proportion living under 16, and above that age; but that the latter are the most numerous class: Davenant states the medium at 20. Dr. Halley supposed the number living under 16, to comprize about one third of the community; and also, that those living between 20 and 42, were about one third of the whole. The preceding analysis of the numbers living at different ages in one kingdom, may with facility be applied to any numerical extent. If we wish to calculate the proportion living at similar ages amongst one hundred million, we have only to multiply by 18 each of the preceding groups composing five million and an half of inhabitants.
Two large and important classes are formed in society, by the distinction of the Sexes into male and female. So soon as the organs of generation are completely evolved; that is, when the two sexes arrive at puberty, they are inflamed with a new passion and pleasing sense. In most warm climates, this generative period is somewhat earlier than in northern latitudes; and in the former also, women are said to be more prolifick. We shall therefore devote a few words to the union of the sexes, from whence ensue procreation and births. Some calculators have computed, that amongst five million and an half of inhabitants in England, there are annually about forty-one thousand legal marriages: of which one sixth part are widows and widowers; about one marriage to every one hundred and four inhabitants; and the annual marriages to the births, as 1 to 4, or 4½. The mean ages at which marriages in this island commence, is computed from 32 to 35 on the side of the man, and 25 on that of the woman; but in this estimate, second and third marriages are included.
In cities, not only fewer enter into the matrimonial state, but the product also of city and country-marriages is observed to differ. Marriages in cities, one with another, seldom produce above four; generally between three and four, and sometimes not three children: whereas country-marriages seldom produce less than four, and generally between four and five. Whether this disparity between the product of city and country-marriages is to be imputed to dissipation, libertinism, and incontinence, both in the single and married state; to the cloudy apprehensions and fears of overstocking their house; to later, fewer, and less frequent unions in the matrimonial bond; or to all these and other causes combined, I submit to the reader’s consideration. From authentick registers of a variety of small towns and country parishes in England, Dr. Short found, that each marriage produced four and a half children, at a medium; for some married pairs have only one or two: others six, eight, twelve, or more; and a small remnant are unprolifick. Natural, or illegitimate children, are enrolled in the public records of christenings, and swell their proportion to the registered weddings somewhat greater than they would appear without this extraneous addition. In some German registers, Dr. Short found, that of 333,655 births, the illegitimate amounted to one thirty-seventh part; and in an inland town of England, that of 10,337 births, 284, or about one thirtieth part, were illegitimate.
If the number of inhabitants in any kingdom, city, or village, continues the same without increase or decrease, and supported by their own procreation only, it is evident, that there the annual births and burials will be equal, and the supply proportioned to the waste; and in equal numbers, as many will die at all ages as are born in the year, on a general average; and the numbers dying any year at one, two, three years of age, and so on to the extreme of existence, will be just equal with the numbers who successively attain to those different ages at which the others die. The total annual births amongst five million and an half of inhabitants in England, are calculated by Davenant at 190,000; which is about one birth to every twenty-five inhabitants; and amongst nine million of inhabitants in Britain and Ireland, the annual procreation will considerably exceed three hundred thousand; and the annual mortality should be somewhat inferior. In the kingdom of Prussia, from the year 1715 to 18, there were christened, at an annual medium, 78,826; buried, 55,852. In the kingdom of Sweden, the annual average of births during nine years, ending in 1763, was 90,240; burials, 69,125. In Norway, in 1761, the christenings were 11,024; burials, 6,926. In France, during three years, ending in 1772, the annual average of births was 920,918; burials, 780,040. In the county district of Vaux, in Switzerland, during ten years, the births were 3,155; burials, 2,504. The country, says Graunt, has 6,339 births for 5,280 burials. In that little fertile atlantic island Madeira, the inhabitants have been computed to double themselves in eighty-four years; so great is the difference between the births and burials. In some provinces of North America, if Dr. Franklin’s calculations are correct, the inhabitants double themselves in the short space of twenty-five, twenty-two, and even in fifteen years. On the other hand, in all the large cities of Europe: in Paris, Vienna, Rome, Dresden, Berlin, Amsterdam,