HKB
A probable cause of epidemics--Extracts from Mr Suessmilch's tables--Periodical returns of sickly seasons to be expected in certain cases--Proportion of births to burials for short periods in any country an inadequate criterion of the real average increase of population--Best criterion of a permanent increase of population--Great frugality of living one of the causes of the famines of China and Indostan--Evil tendency of one of the clauses in Mr Pitt's Poor Bill--Only one proper way of encouraging population--Causes of the Happiness of nations--Famine, the last and most dreadful mode by which nature represses a redundant population--The three propositions considered as established.
By great attention to cleanliness, the plague seems at length to be completely expelled from London. But it is not improbable that among the secondary causes that produce even sickly seasons and epidemics ought to be ranked a crowded population and unwholesome and insufficient food. I have been led to this remark, by looking over some of the tables of Mr Suessmilch, which Dr Price has extracted in one of his notes to the postscript on the controversy respecting the population of England and Wales. They are considered as very correct, and if such tables were general, they would throw great light on the different ways by which population is repressed and prevented from increasing beyond the means of subsistence in any country. I will extract a part of the tables, with Dr Price's remarks.
IN THE KINGDOM OF PRUSSIA, AND DUKEDOM OF LITHUANIA
Proportion Proportion Births Burials Marriages of Births to of Births to Marriages Burials 10 Yrs to 1702 21,963 14,718 5,928 37 to 10 150 to 100 5 Yrs to 1716 21,602 11,984 4,968 37 to 10 180 to 100 5 Yrs to 1756 28,392 19,154 5,599 50 to 10 148 to 100
"N.B. In 1709 and 1710, a pestilence carried off 247,733 of the inhabitants of this country, and in 1736 and 1737, epidemics prevailed, which again checked its increase."
It may be remarked, that the greatest proportion of births to burials, was in the five years after the great pestilence.
DUCHY OF POMERANIA
Proportion Proportion Annual Average Births Burials Marriages of Births to of Births to Marriages Burials 6 yrs to 1702 6,540 4,647 1,810 36 to 10 140 to 100 6 yrs to 1708 7,455 4,208 1,875 39 to 10 177 to 100 6 yrs to 1726 8,432 5,627 2,131 39 to 10 150 to 100 6 yrs to 1756 12,767 9,281 2,957 43 to 10 137 to 100
"In this instance the inhabitants appear to have been almost doubled in fifty-six years, no very bad epidemics having once interrupted the increase, but the three years immediately follow ing the last period (to 1759) were so sickly that the births were sunk to 10,229 and the burials raised to 15,068."