in every district, who were born in other counties, as well as in other countries; and the migration that is constantly going on, and was directed in the last ten years, chiefly from the country to the towns, from Ireland to Scotland and to England, and from the United Kingdom to Canada, the United States, and Australia." The advantages or disadvantages of emigration from the mother country, as affecting the interests of the nation at large, must depend upon the character of the emigrants. Labour and industry are capital: in encouraging or forcing its emigration surely we impoverish the nation. The land, if cultivated to its utmost, would require all these departing hands. Independently of what they take out, in going, they remove wealth from the community. This is shown by transfer from one place to another, thus in the statistics-" So that 4521 of the youth of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex leave their native counties

fruits of the education, skill, and vigevery year, to reap elsewhere the our which they have derived at great expense from their parents at home." To this the following note is appended: "The present value of the future earnings of an agricultural labourer in Norfolk is about £482, at the age of 20-the present value of his subsistence at that age is £248; leaving £234 as the net value of his services. Consequently, the 4521 emigrants of this class carry away a large amount of capital which they have acquired in their native counties." This view applies also to emigration to other countries.

Is a free circulation of the people, like a free circulation of its coin, an increase of its wealth? It is a question beyond me. The modern facilities of removal from place to place must in many ways affect the population. The Physiognomical character will not remain as now, or formerly rather, fixed in several localities.

Mr De Quincey, who keenly observes and deeply thinks, makes these remarks:

:

"The character of face varies essentially in different provinces. Wales has no connection in this respect with Devonshire, nor Kent with Yorkshire, nor either

with Westmoreland. England, it is true, tends, beyond all known examples, to a general amalgamation of differences, by means of its unrivalled freedom of intercourse. Yet, even in England, law and necessity have opposed as yet such and so many obstacles to the free diffusion of

labour, that every generation occupies, by at least five-sixths of its numbers, the ground of its ancestors.

"The movable part of a population is chiefly the higher part; and it is the lower classes that, in every nation, compose the fundus, in which lies latent the national face, as well as the national cha

racter. Each exists here in racy purity and integrity, not disturbed in the one by alien intermarriages, nor in the other by novelties of opinion, or other casual ef fects, derived from education and reading.

Now, look into this fundus, and you will find, in many districts, no such preva

lence of the round orbicular face, as some people erroneously suppose: and in Westmoreland, especially, the ancient long face of the Elizabethan period, powerfully resembling in all its lineaments the ancient Roman face, and often (though not so uniDe Quincey, p. 246. formly) the face of northern Italy in modern times."-Autobiographic Sketches by

Family portraits of past generations,-taken at a time when there was little travelling to and fro, and a "journey to London" was an epoch in a life, and, if the incident in Tristram Shandy be borrowed from known facts, was a stipulation inserted in marriage settlements-family portraits, I say, of those days show very remarkable local likenesses. Races were preserved, and county differed from county physiognomically, as in character of soil and climate. Whether the more large intermixture, which modern habits of travel and removal are producing, will be beneficial to the health, strength, and beauty of the race as a whole, or whether for other reasons it be or be not desirable, are questions for philosophy to determine. If we may form an an opinion from the physiognomy of the people in the parts in England that receive large supplies to their population from Wales and Ireland, personal appearances are likely to be much improved. It may be asked, also, if a moral improvement is evident. The ties of unchanging families, the attachment to local homes, if they do not sharpen the intellect,

greatly cultivate close affections and sympathies, and these home attachments centralise in the human breast that love of country, which is weakened by being dissipated in a larger area. In small circles every individual is known. The consciousness of his responsibility to a neighbourhood is felt, and this is a moral sense. The farther a man goes, and the more frequently, the sooner he is apt to consider himself a citizen of the world: while trade and merchandise, the occupations of most people, encourage the ubiquitous idea. Ubiquitous persons acquire a sharpness, a cleverness; a "vagabond" is seldom a fool, a vagrant" is but another name for a knave in our common vocabulary. Of local physiognomy and person, there is an amusing illustration in lithographic print. It is in a very pleasant and useful little book, The Greatest Plague of Life, on the relative behaviour to each other of servants and mistresses. The print exhibits a female servant who comes to be hired. No one who knows the peculiar race could doubt for a moment that the woman comes from the county Cork. But, doubting if her native country would be quite acceptable, you see at a glance how her mouth is made up, and a twirl of the brogue is on it to say, what she is made to say, that she comes "from Cor-r-nwall." The writer of this portion of the Census Report is of opinion, that a great change will take place with regard to the birthplaces of the British population. Sanitary improvements may cause that many cities and towns will keep up their population; but I think that, while writing the following passage, he must have forgotten altogether his statistics regarding the young population of Manchester, and the life-duration of six years: "Hitherto the population has migrated from the high or the comparatively healthy ground of the country to the cities and seaport towns, in which few families have lived for two generations. But it is evident that henceforward the great cities will not be like camps-or the fields on which the people of other places exercise their energies and industry-but the birthplaces of a large part of the British races." The former portion

of this passage seems to contradict a common saying in Somersetshire, which you have often heard, Eusebius, that those of the hills who marry into the low vales seldom live long, and vice versâ, of the natives of the vales, thus migrating to the bills. There is a universal sense, whether it be prejudice, instinct, or reason, that proclaims the value of "native air." The sick seek it for the restoration of health, even though it be less pure than that they are leaving. A change of air from home is a temporary, not a permanent benefit; the best change after a time is that which takes back the patient. Such removals are more often for change of scene, and home vexations, than for another air than the patient's own native. I remember many years ago an old man in his hundredth year being induced by a daughter, under the notion of change of air, to come from the hills of Monmouthshire, where he was born, and from which he had never migrated, to visit Bristol. I saw him as soon as he arrived; he was hale: certainly, he fixed his abode in not the cleanest or most airy locality. As well as I remember, he did not live a week there. Old people can ill bear changes of localities or habits. It is a wellknown story of the very old man who was, out of an ill-timed compassion, taken from breaking stones in the road, and transferred to better living and no work. He died at once. knew his work was done-his work, such as it was, and such as his mind was, was his mind's vital motion, as it was his bodily habit. The circulation stopped, both in body and mind: it killed him.

He

There is something very childish in Table to show the tendency of the inhabitants of every county "to go to London." A mechanician might make a child's toy of it, as a Roundabout, with its horses bridled, and carriages ticketed, "To London," "To York," &c. &c.

I am glad, Eusebius, after this, to come to something really useful, because it is of a benevolent kind; and that will, I am sure, cover some out of the multitude of sins of impertinent statistics. It is, of "the blind and the deaf and dumb." There may be little reason to doubt individual char

ities-but such statistics may be the means of directing more earnestly the zeal of the Home Department of the Government, to provide ample means for the alleviation of the unhappy condition of the blind and the deaf and dumb. The blind are to the population of Great Britain and the British Islands as 1 in 975. The deaf and dumb are to the same population as 1 in 1670. This is curious. "Looking at the distribution of the deaf and dumb over the face of Great Britain, we find them to be more common in the agricultural and pastoral districts, especially where the country is hilly, than in those containing a large amount of town population." You will observe here that deafness is united with dumbness. The reason is evident; deafness is generally of degree, and so is subject to remedial or alleviating appliances; nor in extreme cases does it cut off communication of the individual with his fellows, and it is not unfrequently only a pretence. Sturdy beggars sometimes make pretence of both calamities. My father told me that near his own door he once saw a beggar with a paper on his hat, "Deaf and Dumb." A friend coming by, my Father called upon him for compassion. The friend was suspicious, and said, "Deaf and dumb! I don't believe a word of it. Show me your tongue." By the sudden and peremptory demand, the impostor was confounded, and instantly put out his tongue. This account of an imposture will have no tendency to stay charities, because they are best bestowed upon institutions. To be born deaf is to be born dumb. There is a most curious case of partial dumbness, so vouched for by many most respectable witnesses, and beyond suspicion, whom I have myself known, and who have narrated it to me, that, account for it how you will, it must be difficult to doubt the fact. It is told in Phelps' History of Somersetshire.

The wife of a farmer near Glastonbury having brought him three daughters, in his disappointment at having no son, he vowed that if another daughter should be born, he would never speak to her. A son was born, but in him the curse of the vow, as it may be well called, was literally

realised by a transfer of partial dumbness. The son up to thirty years of age, the duration of his father's life, never spoke to him-nor could he speak to any male. At his father's death, this curse was loosened from his tongue. To the astonishment of all, he could from that day address males and females, like other people. I believe this anecdote may also be found in the Lancet of 1831. Of course it will be accounted for as coming under the phenomena of nervous affections: some will put another construction upon it. "Public InstitutionsInmates of workhouses, prisons, lunatic asylums, and hospitals," make up another valuable chapter in the Census. Of prisons, it is said for the honour of the fair sex, that they are but a small proportion of the inmates. "The total number of persons in the different prisons, bridewells, convict depôts, and bulks in Great Britain, on the 31st March 1851, was 26,85522,451 males, and 4,404 females." Before, however, the country can have just cause for congratulation upon this subject, it ought to know how many villains, scoundrels, and thieves are roaming or lurking about the land who ought to be in prison. This is a matter worthy the attention of statisticiaus. But there seems to be a wonderful sparing of roguery. It was but the other day I read of a case at one of our police-offices, which exemplifies this unseemly sparing. A gentleman had complained of the total stripping of the leaves off certain of his trees by juvenile offenders. It turned out that they were employed by adulterators of tea. The magistrate threatened that, upon a repetition of the offence, he would publish the names of the employers-why did he not then do it?

I wrote to you in my last but slightly of the Malthusian doctrine of the law of population. Its selfishness was shocking-so shocking, indeed, as to lead many minds to doubt the benevolence of the Creator as the Giver of food, and Maker of his creatures. I rejoice to find that the truth which is in Malthus's doctrine has been sifted from the false. The refutation shows how one error in a principle, which comprehends, as in this case of food and population, two elements,

destroys its essential character. Malthus left out one element, that which arises out of the nature of man-man's industry-by which omission he rendered his theory a theory of cruelty and selfishness, and unacceptable, nay, odious, to the thinking and feeling portion of mankind. I quote with pleasure the better exposition of that law by Sir James Steuart, as given in the Census Report, wherein is also a full statement regarding Malthus and his doctrine :

"All that is peculiar in this doctrine, all that is erroneous, and all that has shocked the public opinion of the country, ever since its enunciation, flows from a flagrant oversight, which might be pardoned in a young, hasty controversialist, but should assuredly have been at once taken into account when it was dis

covered in the light of Sir James Steuart's original analytical work that had been first published in 1767. Malthusianism had, however, become a sect; had been persecuted, and was modified and softened, but still upheld by its disciples.

"Sir James Steuart, who wrote before Adam Smith, lays down the fundamental principle of Malthus, but limits it by a preceding, overruling proposition. (1) We find, he says, the productions of all countries, generally speaking, in proportion to the number of their inhabitants; and (2), on the other hand (as Malthus asserts), the inhabitants are most commonly in proportion to the food. Steuart then shows that the food of the world may be divided into two portions: (A.) the natural produce of the earth; and (B.) the portion which is created by human industry. (A.) corresponds to the food of animals, and is the limit to the number of savages. (B.) is the product of industry, and increases (all other things being equal) in proportion to the numbers of

civilised men.

"The whole of the chapter on Popula

tion in Steuart's work should be consult

ed. Malthus, it will be observed, loses sight of this analysis, and throughout his work confounds the yield of the untilled earth with the produce of human industry; which increases at least as rapidly as the numbers of civilised men, and will increase until the resources of science are exhausted, and the world is peopled."

And now, Eusebius, I bring my long letter to a close. If I have thrown some ridicule upon the Census, and laughed at some of its childish work, and shown myselfrather suspicious of a public Busybody, and, like most people, have a general dislike to being too closely questioned, and being made up, as it were, into a parcel or a kind of railway package on its way to London, with a ticket plastered on my back, while the inside shall contain an inventory of all my goods and chattels, and a narrative of all my minutest concerns, the destination of all which parcel of myself is some pigeon-hole in a metropolitan office-and for what purport, it is past the wit of man to divine, but every man's wit may suspect to be particularly mischievous to him-although I say I have, and think most people have an antipathy to these doings of a public Busybody, I am not insensible to the utility of a census properly directed. Surely the whole people have cause to dread the encroachments of Questioners; and it has been shown how, since 1801, our statisticians have encroached upon the Englishman's home, his "castle"perhaps, for aught we know, undermining it while he is fast asleep. That Table of Proximity and Density is

enough to make a nervous man try hourly the extent of his elbow-room, to dream of a stream of population rushing in upon him, or dropping down upon him to crush him, or like wolves to devour him, in a land where population may be increasing, and food decreasing. We are all, Eusebius, and should prefer being let alone; nervous about something or other, but do not suspect me on account of the last sentence to be a Malthusian.

It must be a wholesome maxim for a nation to follow, to obey the command "Increase and multiply," and trust in Him who made us, that he will bountifully supply food for all.

Dear EUSEBIUS,

Viva Valeque.