causes, particularly the degree of civil liberty and equality existing
at the time, must always have great influence in exciting and directing
this spirit.) And a greater proportional yearly increase of produce
will almost invariably be followed by a greater proportional increase
of population. But, besides this great cause, which would naturally
give the excess of births above burials greater at the end of Queen
Elizabeth's reign than in the middle of the present century, I cannot
help thinking that the occasional ravages of the plague in the former
period must have had some tendency to increase this proportion. If an
average of ten years had been taken in the intervals of the returns of
this dreadful disorder, or if the years of plague had been rejected as
accidental, the registers would certainly give the proportion of births
to burials too high for the real average increase of the population.
For some few years after the great plague in 1666, it is probable that
there was a more than usual excess of births above burials,
particularly if Dr Price's opinion be founded, that England was more
populous at the revolution (which happened only twenty-two years
afterwards) than it is at present.

Mr King, in 1693, stated the proportion of the births to the burials
throughout the Kingdom, exclusive of London, as 115 to 100. Dr Short
makes it, in the middle of the present century, 111 to 100, including
London. The proportion in France for five years, ending in 1774, was
117 to 100. If these statements are near the truth; and if there are no
very great variations at particular periods in the proportions, it
would appear that the population of France and England has accommodated
itself very nearly to the average produce of each country. The
discouragements to marriage, the consequent vicious habits, war,
luxury, the silent though certain depopulation of large towns, and the
close habitations, and insufficient food of many of the poor, prevent
population from increasing beyond the means of subsistence; and, if I
may use an expression which certainly at first appears strange,
supercede the necessity of great and ravaging epidemics to repress what
is redundant. Were a wasting plague to sweep off two millions in
England, and six millions in France, there can be no doubt whatever
that, after the inhabitants had recovered from the dreadful shock, the
proportion of births to burials would be much above what it is in
either country at p