number of religious edifices. Some of them still contain ten churches only. These Deaneries gradually fell into disuse from the period of the Conquest; but recent legislation tends to their revival.

Changes in the Ancient Territorial divisions of the Country. Counties.-The Counties of England and Wales have undergone considerable changes.

The observance in Wales of peculiar laws and customs, combined with the use of another language by the people, naturally tended to maintain in a marked manner the distinction, which still exists in a less degree, between the inhabitants of the Principality and those of England. Partly with a view to remove this distinction, an Act was passed in the 27th year of Henry VIII. (A.D. 1535), declaring Wales to be for ever incorporated with the realm of England, and that all natives of Wales should enjoy the same liberty as the king's other subjects, with the like laws, justice, and customs of tenure. By this statute, all the marches, or border lands between England and Wales, were either farmed into new shires, or added to old ones. The new counties thus created were Mon- | mouth, Brecon, Radnor, Montgomery, and Denbigh; Monmouth being named as an English county.

Few changes have been made in Scotland in respect of county limits; although the confused manner in which the component parts of some of the counties are scattered over the mainland and islands, and the frequent intermixture in others of detached parts of adjoining counties, must be productive of inconvenience.

Under the Reform Act, all the large and populous counties of England have been divided for the purpose of returning additional members to Parliament.

Where portions of counties were detached from the main body of their respective counties and locally situate in other counties, it was enacted that, for the purposes of elections, every such portion should be considered to be part of the county or division by which it was wholly surrounded, or, if bounded by more than one, of that county with which it had the longest common boundary. Some exceptions were, however, admitted; and the town of Dudley, with other portions of the county of Worcester, lying in contiguous counties, and certain portions of the county of Flint, were allowed to remain undisturbed.

A Bill was subsequently passed, in 1844, under which every detached part of a county in England and Wales has become, since the 20th October 1844, for all purposes part of the county to which it had been annexed for Parliamentary purposes.

About one-half of the English counties have thus been altered more or less. The only considerable changes, however, are those affecting the counties of Worcester and Salop, Durham and Northumberland. An addition of surface, amounting to 17,403 acres, with

Besides Durham and Salop, the English counties which have undergone some curtailment of territory are Hants, Berks, Hertford, Wilts, Dorset, Cornwall, Somerset, Gloucester, Stafford, and Monmouth.

Of the Welsh counties only four are altered, viz., Brecon, Radnor, Montgomery, and Denbigh; and these are affected to a very trifling extent.

Changes in the ancient Boundaries of Boroughs.-Changes have been made in the boundaries of many of the old corporate towns, while the limits of others equally requiring readjustment have been allowed to remain undisturbed. The obvious necessity, arising from the rapid growth of many of the boroughs, for an extension of their limits, in relation to the parliamentary franchise, was no less apparent with respect to municipal government; and it was deemed just and reasonable that all possessing a community of interest, as inhabitants of one town, should, while sharing many common advantages, also bear their due proportion of the burdens attaching to the corporate institutions. A general revision, and the extension where necessary, of the boundaries of boroughs, was therefore deemed an essential part of the plan of reform, under the Municipal Corporation Bill. When that measure became law, the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Municipal Boundaries had accomplished only a small portion of their task. It was provided, therefore, as a temporary arrangement, that with respect to certain boroughs returning members to Parliament, the Parliamentary boundaries should be taken for municipal purposes until altered by Parliament, and that, with respect to the remaining boroughs, their limits should remain unaltered, until Parliament should otherwise direct.

In 1837 the Commissioners made their report, and suggested, in numerous instances, new municipal boundaries for boroughs sending members to Parliament, and for most of the unrepresented towns. The general effect of their recommendations was to extend the existing boundaries, so as to take in suburbs and localities immediately connected with the towns; in a few cases, rural parts included within the ancient limits were to be left out. Many of the proposed changes were, however, for various reasons, opposed by the inhabitants; and the municipal boundaries are suffered to remain in the state in which they were left by the Act of 5 and6 Will, IV.,

c. 76. Of 178 boroughs in the schedule of that Act, 60 were enlarged by the adoption of the Parliamentary limits; but no extension of area has taken place in 118 boroughs including the whole of those not possessing the Parliamentary franchise-although no inconsiderable number of them has strikingly increased in population. As a consequence, it not unfrequently happens that the municipality scarcely represents the town any more than the City of London represents the metropolis of the British empire.*

By the enlargement of the 60 cities and boroughs referred to, contiguous parts, containing in 1851 a population of 510,852, have been brought within the pale of municipal institutions; the population within the old limits being 1,185,850, and within the present limits 1,696,702.

Recent Territorial Subdivisions of the Country. The Act for "the Amendment and Better Administration of the Laws relating to the Poor," empowered the Poor Law Commissioners" to declare so many parishes as they may think fit to be united for the administration of the Laws for the Relief of the Poor." The united parishes were designated Unions. The Act also provided for the election of a representative Board of Guardians, and for the appointment of officers in every Union, by whom the local rates for the relief of the poor, and for many other purposes, are collected and expended. The Unions, under the Act for Registering Births, Deaths, and Marriages in England, were subdivided into as many smaller districts as the Commissioners, subject to the approval of the Registrar-General, thought fit. The whole of England and Wales has not been placed under the Poor Law Amendment Act; but the Registration Act extends over all England and Wales, which is thus divided into 624 new districts. A district comprises on an average three or four subdistricts, to each of which there is a registrar of births and deaths. A subdistrict extends over a certain number of parishes or townships, except in those rare cases where the parish is large, and is itself made one or more subdistricts. The subdis

tricts contain on an average seven parishes, townships, or places, of which the population is, in 16,008 cases, separately returned.

To the new Districts a staff of officers is attached; and, where they are Unions, there are the clerk to the Board of Guardians, relieving officers, medical officers, superintendent registrars, and registrars, whose duties are defined by the Poor Law Board and the Registrar-General. A system of rating is in operation; and the districts have practically

been found useful for other administrative

purposes, besides those which were in contemplation at the time of their formation.

* The borough of Stockton may be mentioned as an example. Its ancient limits, to which the present reformed municipal jurisdiction is confined, contained a population, in 1851, of only 1867; while the town, of which the borough forms but a fraction, contained 9808 inhabitants.

The circuits of the county courts comprise aggregates of these districts; and, under the Militia Act, powers are given for rendering them applicable in carrying out the machinery of that measure.

By the Act for taking the Census, the population of England and Wales was directed to be enumerated in Districts and Subdistricts under the control of the registration officers.

Besides the subdivisions- ancient and modern-which have been described, others exist for a great variety of purposes: these are often of a complex character, and evidently made quite independently of each other, as the boundary lines cross in every direction. The late Mr. Rickman noticed that, “there are in England and Wales about 550 parishes which are known to extend into two counties, or into more than one hundred, or other division ;"* tered confusion of the components parts" of ;"* and he pointed out "the scatthe ancient hundreds, as well as the irregularities in their size: "so irregular," he says, "is this distribution of territory, that while some of the southern hundreds do not exceed two square miles in area, nor one thousand persons in population, the hundreds of Lancashire average three hundred square miles in them (Salford hundred) [in 1831] is 430,000." area, and the population contained in one of

The

The cause of these irregularities is evident. The division of England and Wales into hundreds, on the original plan, of which Kent and the counties in Wessex offer examples, was never carried out; and in the course of the thousand years that have since elapsed, the face of the country has undergone great which from less than four millions has changes the distribution of the population increased to eighteen millions-is no longer the same. A Hundred no longer contains a hundred families. Bridges have brought into divided; villages have grown into vast cities; intimate union populations which rivers the mining and manufacturing industry of the last hundred years has covered the woodlands, wastes, and desolate lands of the midland and northern counties with people. Hundred courts, the Manor courts, the Shire motes, the Burgh motes, have been superseded by the Petty Sessions, the County courts, the Town Councils, the Boards of Guardians that discharge duties-such as the election of members of Parliament, and the relief of the boroughs, and hundreds were formed; while poor-never contemplated when the counties, the system of frank-pledge in tythings has disappeared. For all the useful purposes of comparison, and statistical inquiry, the old divisions in many parts of the kingdom are entirely unsuiteď. The Legislature, then, without any settled plan, has, in recent Acts of Parliament, entirely disregarded the old has changed, in numerous instances, the divisions of the country into hundreds, and boundaries and divisions of counties as well as of boroughs.

* See Preface to Enumeration Abstracts, 1831, p. xvi., also p. xv.

The time, it seemed at this Census, had come, when a re-arrangement should be made of the 16,000 places which have well-defined boundaries, and are separately returned in England and Wales. After full consideration, it was determined that the new arrangement should be based upon the districts in which the births and deaths of the population are registered; as it is on the excess of births over deaths that the increase of population depends. In the abstracts of the Registrar-General, which had received the sanction of Her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Home Department, the districts had, prior to 1841, been topographically arranged in counties consisting of entire Registration Districts; and the counties had been thrown into eleven groups or divisions; ten extending over England, and one over Wales, to which Monmouthshire was added.

The old division of the country into parishes, townships, and counties, is open to many of the objections which lie against hundreds. Parishes are, in many instances, almost inextricably intermingled: and they vary in population from single families to tens of thousands of families; in extent, from a few hundreds of acres to many thousands of acres. The counties are also irregularly and unequally constituted: some are disproportionately small; thus, Rutland has on 95,805 acres, only 22,983 inhabitants; Huntingdon has on 230,865 acres, 64,188 inhabitants; Westmoreland, on 485,432 acres, 58,287 inhabitants; Bedford, on 295,582 acres, 124,478 inhabitants. Other counties are disproportionately large: thus, Kent has on 1,041,479 acres, 615,766 inhabitants; Lincoln, on 1,776,738 acres, 407,222 inhabitants; Devon, on 1,657,180 acres, 567,098 inhabitants; Lancashire, on 1,219,221 acres, 2,031,236 inhabitants; Yorkshire-in the three Ridings and the City-on 3,829,286 acres, 1,797,995 inhabitants; Middlesex, on the limited area of 180,168 acres, numbers 1,886,576 inhabitants. Under the new arrangement of the returns no change whatever has been made in the boundaries of parishes; for the Hundreds, Districts have been substituted; and the groups of complete districts-called, for the sake of distinction, " Registration counties," differ little in extent or area from the ancient counties with which, wherever it was practicable, their boundaries are made conterminate. The cause of the discrepancy between the registration counties" and the other counties arises from the circumstance that, in many cases, the boundaries of the old counties were rivers; on which, subsequently, at fords and bridges, important towns arose the markets and centres of meeting for the people of all the surrounding parishes. These towns have been made the centres of the new Districts, as at them it is most convenient for the guardians to meet, and the officers to reside.

66

The inconveniences and perplexities which the variety of ecclesiastical, military and civil, fiscal and judicial, ancient and modern, municipal and parliamentary, subdivisions of

the country occasion, have been sensibly felt by us,' as they were brought under our notice in the enumeration of the population. It is not within our province to reduce all these to simplicity and harmony; but we call attention to their existence; and venture humbly to suggest that the task of taking any future Census, the comparison of statistical facts of every kind, and probably all administrative arrangements, would be greatly facilitated by the adoption of a uniform system of territorial divisions in Great Britain.

For the purposes of statistical comparison, we shall be able to use the New "Divisions," and shall thus obtain a large basis of operation, compress the Tables within a moderate compass, and get rid of the inconvenience of dealing with numbers of people differing so widely as the population of the small and large counties. London (population 2,362,236) naturally forms one division; Yorkshire (population 1,789,047) another division; and the other groups of counties are formed on a scale of corresponding magnitude; for the average population of the eleven English divisions is 1,629,782; the average area is 5302 square miles.

Scotland is divided on the same principle as England, into two great divisions, called Northern and Southern Divisions, corresponding-but not closely-with the Highlands and Lowlands. The population of the Southern Division is 1,813, 562; of the Northern Division 1,075,180; and inversely the area of the Southern Division is 9,000 square miles, of the Northern Division 22,324 miles.

The inequality in the distribution of the population, and the irregular geographical forms of these islands, render the formation of divisions of equal area and equal population impossible. But the area, the population, the topographical position of counties, their historical connections, and the leading occupations, have all been taken into account in the formation of the Divisions; so that while many other combinations of counties may be advantageously formed, these topographical groups will, it is believed, be found convenient for general purposes. The Divisions, if area and population are taken into account, are on the same scale as the four provinces of Ireland, and the ancient provinces of Continental kingdoms; in their main features they correspond with the earlier Divisions of the country.

GENERAL RESULTS OF THE INQUIRY INTO THE

NUMBERS OF THE PEOPLE.

The most important result which the inquiry establishes, is the addition, in half a century, of ten millions of people to the British population. The increase of population in the half of this century nearly equals the increase in all preceding ages; and the addition, in the last ten years, of two millions three hundred thousand to the inhabitants of Great Britain, exceeds the increase in the last fifty years of the eighteenth century. Contemporaneously with the increase of the population at home, emigration has proceeded since 1750 to such

an extent, as to people large states in America, and to give permanent possessors and cultivators to the land of large colonies in all the temperate regions of the world; where, by a common language, commercial relations, and the multiplied reciprocities of industry, the people of the new nations maintain an indissoluble union with the parent country. Two other movements of the population have been going on in the United Kingdom: the immigration of the population of Ireland into Great Britain, and the constant flow of the country population into the towns. The current of the Celtic migration is now diverted from these shores; and chiefly flows in the direction of the United States of America, where the wanderers find friends and kindred. The movement of the country population to the towns went on unnoticed by the earlier writers, and it has never yet been clearly exhibited; but it is believed that the Tables of the birthplace of the inhabitants of the towns and counties will determine its extent and character. It is a peculiarity of this movement in these latter times, that it is directed to new points, where the towns engage in a manufacture as one vast undertaking, in which nearly the whole population is concerned; as well as to the county towns, and to London.

Amidst all these great and unexampled changes in the population, two questions arise of great importance: "Can the population of GREAT BRITAIN be sustained at the rate of emigration which is now going on, and which will probably be continued, for many years?" To assist in solving this problem, the new question of "civil or conjugal condition" will enable us to show the comparative numbers of unmarried and married men and women in the country at each age of life, in each district.

The solution of a different question of equal difficulty and importance: "Can the population of England be profitably employed?" will be facilitated by the new classification of the people at each age, according to their Occupations.

It is one of the obvious physical effects of the increase of population, that the proportion of land to each person diminishes; and the decrease is such, that within the last fifty years, the number of acres to each person living, has fallen from 54 to 2.7 acres in Great Britain; from four acres to two acres in England and Wales. As a countervailing advantage, the people have been brought into each other's neighbourhood; their average distance from each other has been reduced in the ratio of 3 to 2; labour has been divided; industry has been organized in towns; and the quantity of produce either consisting of, or exchangeable for, the conveniences, elegancies, and necessaries of life, has, in the mass, largely increased, and is increasing at a more rapid rate than the population.

One of the moral effects of the increase of the people is an increase of their mental activity; as the aggregation in towns brings them oftener into combination and collision. The population of the towns is not so completely

separated in England as it is in some other countries, from the population of the surrounding country; for the walls, gates, and castles which were destroyed in the civil wars, have never been rebuilt; and the population has outgrown the ancient limits; while stone lines of demarcation have never been drawn around the new centres of population. Tolls have been collected since a very early period in the market-places; but the system of octroi involving the examination, by customs' officers, of every article entering within the precincts of the town-has never existed. The freemen in some of the towns enjoyed, anciently, exclusive privileges of trading; but the freedom could always be acquired by the payment of fines; and by the great measure of Municipal Reform (1835), every town has been thrown open to settlers from every quarter. At the same time, too, that the populations of the towns and of the country, have become so equally balanced in numberten millions against ten millions-the union between them has become, by the circumstance that has led to the increase of the towns, more intimate than it was before; for they are now connected together by innumerable relationships, as well as by the associations of trade. It will be seen in a subsequent section, that a large proportion of the population in the market towns, the county towns, the manufacturing towns, and the metropolis, was born in the country; and that, in England, town and country are bound together, not only by the intercourse of commerce and the interchange of intelligence but by a thousand ties of blood and affection.

The town and the country populations are now so intimately blended that the same administrative arrangements easily apply to the whole kingdom.

The vast system of towns in which half the population lives, has its peculiar dangers, which the high mortality and the recent epidemics reveal. Extensive sanatory arrangements, and all the appliances of physical as well as of social science, are necessary to preserve the natural vigour of the population, and to develop the inexhaustible resources of the English race. The crowding of the people in houses in close streets, and the consequent dissolution of families-arising out of defective house-accommodation-are evils which demand attentive consideration.

The activity of the intelligence and religious feelings of the people, has led to an increased demand for instruction, and for places of public worship. The extent to which this demand has been met, has hitherto been imperfectly known, and is not easily determined; but we believe that, as far as the inquiry can be prosecuted in a statistical form, the returns respecting schools, literary institutions, churches, chapels, and congregations, will throw much light upon the educational institutions and the spiritual condition of the people of Great Britain.

Tables embodying the principal facts discussed in this portion of the Report, will be found in the Appendix.

A CENSUS in which only the numbers of a people are taken is necessarily incomplete; for, in time, man differs almost as much from himself as he does from the things around him; and the changes which he undergoes are not wrought solely by external circumstances, but arise in the ordinary course of his life. How different is he in infancy, in the prime of manhood, and in decrepit age! Among uncivilized tribes the enumerations are more generally confined to the "fighting men;" and the Mosaic Census, the earliest on record, numbered "every male from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war. The discrimination of the Ages of a population is indispensable where all are enumerated, as the proportional numbers in the various stages of life differ not only in different nations, but, as will be immediately shown, in the same nation at different times.

Summary Views of the Ages of the Population.-The ages of the British population were first returned in 1821 in 1801 and 1811 "age" formed no head of inquiry. In 1821 the answers to the question of age were "purposely left optional, both as regarding the returning officer, and the persons to whom the question was to be proposed by him." Yet the returns of ages, under this voluntary inquiry, embraced 8-ninths of the persons enumerated; and where no returns were made it was apparently the fault of the overseers, rather than of the people; for the omission was not in individual returns, but in whole parishes and townships. In 1831 the number of males of 20 years of age and upwards was demanded; and the inquiry extended no further in this direction. In 1851 the name and age of each person were written in a schedule, either by the head of the family or by the enumerator; as indeed had been done, with a little less accuracy, in 1841.

The ages of 52,565 vagrants and others were not stated in 1841, and nearly as many ages of the same classes were, probably, omitted in 1851; but as it is necessary for the purposes of calculation to distribute the numbers proportionally over the several periods of life, it was deemed most convenient to carry out this distribution at once, by inserting their probable ages in the books, with distinctive marks to indicate the interpolation. With this qualification, the numbers, as they were returned, of males and females separately, under 5 years of age, of 5 years and under 10 years, and for each subsequent quinquennial period of life up to 100, are given in the Tables for each of the 11 divisions, and the 52 counties, of England and Wales; for the two divisions, and the 32 counties of Scotland; and for the Islands in the British Seas.

Mr. Rickman noticed that in 1821 and 1831

the number of males under twenty years of age and the number of twenty years of age and upwards were nearly equal; and this propor

*Numbers i. 20.

tion has since been regarded as invariable, or it has been assumed that the males of the age of twenty and upwards are equal in number to a fourth part of the whole population.

The Census of 1851 reveals a very different state of things; for even if the army, navy, and merchant seamen abroad are omitted, the males in Great Britain* of 20 years of age and upwards (5,475,540) exceed the males under twenty years of age (4,779,313) by 696,227.

The army, navy, and merchant seamen of Great Britain, at home and abroad, were omitted in the statements of age both for 1821 and 1831, but they should evidently be included, as the subtraction creates a great and unnatural depression of the number of males in the middle periods of life. Including these classes of men,-whose ages, as well as those of others omitted, have been estimated for the previous years from the returns of 1851comparisons, at different ages, may be instituted between the whole of the male and female population. The numbers have undergone a further correction, to raise the population, which was never taken quite in the middle of the several Census years, to its estimated amount at that period.

The following are the most remarkable results :-Of the 14,422,801 people living in 1821, 6,981,068 were under 20 years of age, and 7,441,733 were twenty years of age and upwards; while of the 21,185,010 living in 1851, the numbers under 20 years of age were 9,558,114, and the numbers of the age of 20 years and upwards were 11,626,896.

The number of the population of the age of 20 and upwards in 1851 exceeds the number under the age of 20 by 2,068,782.

The increase in the young population under 20 years of age in the 30 years (1821-1851) has been 2,577.046; the increase in the adult population of 20 years of age and upwards in the same time has been 4,185,163.

The males of 20 years of age and upwards at the two periods amount to 3,587,600, and to 5,610,777; the increase in the 30 years has been, consequently, 2,023,177 men of the age of 20 years and upwards. All of these numbers, it is evident, would not be able to " forth to war," if the population in mass were called to arms; and the quality of the population at after ages differs so much, in vitality, strength, and intelligence, that it requires a still further analysis.

"go

The males at the soldier's age of 20 to 40 amounted to 1,966,664 in 1821, and to 3,193,496 in 1851; the increase in the thirty years is equivalent in number to a vast army of more than twelve hundred thousand men (1,226,832).

contrary is expressly stated, the Islands in the * Throughout this Report, except where the British Seas, namely, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man,-are, for the sake of brevity, included under the general head of "Great Britain' in the statements and observations.