suming the proportion of marriages to be the same throughout Ireland (and if it vary, it will, if we may rely upon all other similar facts, so vary as to strengthen the argument), then, computing the proportion of these children to a given number of inha bitants in every province, and comparing these together, the order of their prolificness will be clearly indicated. Then, as we have the area of the provinces severally, as well as the number of inhabitants in each, we have the necessary facts for enabling us to determine, lastly, whether Ireland obeys the law of population for which I contend, as that of nature and of truth. In the ensuing table, the four provinces are taken in their aggregate amounts; the number of children under five, in each, being calculated on every twenty thousand of the inhabitants, in order to facilitate comparisons with similar tables and calculations in the work about to be published.

TABLE of the Four Provinces of Ireland, showing the Contents, Population, and Number of Children under Five Years old in each, in 1821 ; with the Proportion of the latter to every 20,000 Inhabitants; exclusive of exempt Cities and Towns.

Here, then, the principle of population exhibits itself as clearly as it has done in all the other countries which I have previously examined; the fecundity is greatest where the inhabitants are the thinnest ;

and when we come to touch upon the comparative condition of these provinces, the demonstration will be the more striking, as it may certainly be assumed as a universal fact, that, where the population is in the easiest circumstances, the greatest proportion of children are there preserved. The least knowledge of the condition of the provinces of Ireland will suffice to enforce this observation, and will very greatly strengthen the striking results the preceding table exhibits.

(3.) As to the cities and towns of Ireland which are distinctly given in the census, they are only eight in number, and consequently too few to establish very clearly the surprising fact which, as I have stated in the Introduction, I have found to exist, in regard to the proportionate fecundity of the towns of England, which is, on the average, determined by their size. Nature, as I have observed elsewhere, though evidently conforming to certain absolute rules, yet rarely developes them very clearly in individual instances; they are to be sought for in the results of those great and general averages by which all her operations are usually regulated, and by observing which her laws are alone revealed. But, when closely examining the population of the hundred principal towns in England, I hardly expected to have found the law, referred to, in operation as it regarded them; nor did I conceive my theory required it: such, however, is the fact; and though the secondary causes which regulate the increase of mankind, from procreation only, in reference to the size of towns, are less obvious than those which operate in entire districts of considerable extent,

still, when examined in any considerable number of cases, they appear not the less certain, and strengthen the system for which I contend, by a series of minute, as well as general proofs, which I confess have surprised me as I successively discovered them.

The cities and towns in Ireland, of exempt jurisdiction, are only eight in number; hardly enough, therefore, to form those averages which, as it will be observed hereafter, are necessary to arrive at certain conclusions on the subject; but still even these show a manifest and striking tendency to conform to the law of human increase, as previously developed. This will appear from the following table.

(4.) But to return to the provinces. The foregoing calculations of the comparative fecundity of the four being formed on the gross amounts which the census furnishes of each; it may, perhaps, be said, the apparent diminishing ratio of human increase exhibited, in proportion to the condensation of the population, may possibly be accidental; which, in so few instances as four, is certainly a possible, though not, as connected with the previous proofs of the same fact, a

very probable conjecture. But to obviate this objec tion altogether, I will give two other tables; and, first, one in which the several counties are separately calcu lated as before, and the mean proportion of the whole in each province taken. Without giving these severally, which may be done, if the facts are doubted, by a reference to a succeeding table, these are the results :-

The preceding tables, relating to the provinces, vary very little, and either of them equally proves the important fact of prolificness being regulated as so often stated

the difference in the number of children under five, in Ulster, where there are upwards of four hundred inhabitants on the Irish square mile, and in Connaught, where there are only two hundred and sixty-three in the same area, it will be observed, amounts to ten in every hundred; a variation, which, it hardly need be said, must make a very great difference in the rate of increase in those two provinces, a fact which will be still further confirmed anon. The other two provinces, it will have been observed, class themselves in exact conformity with the same law of nature; giving it a species of proof of the most minute and satisfactory kind.

(5.) But furthermore; it is advanced, as one of the

main axioms of the forthcoming work, that poverty and privation are the great causes of a high degree of human fecundity; and any one acquainted, in the least degree, with the condition of the different parts of Ireland, must, in casting his eye on these tables, not only perceive that they are classed in reference to the density of their population and the measure of their fecundity, but likewise in exact conformity to their condition, in regard to every thing that contributes to or constitutes prosperity and comfort; and that Ulster, with 407 on the square mile, compared with Connaught, with only 264, claims for its inhabitants an individual superiority far more striking than the numerical one.

This important fact, true as it regards every other country, I must attempt fully to impress upon the reader's mind in reference to Ireland. Even in that unhappy country, in which the population has to contend with disadvantages as unnatural as they are severe, still that district is the happiest and the most prosperous which is the best peopled. The proof of this gratifying fact must be obvious to all who have seen the country, or who have informed themselves concerning the situation and conditions of its different provinces: contrasting the most densely peopled of these with that which is the least so, and the difference in this respect, it will be observed, is great. "The people of Ulster are," as Wakefield assures us," in general more industrious, better clothed, and living in a more comfortable manner than in many other parts of Ireland'." This is the ' Wakefield, Account of Ireland, vol. ii. p. 730.