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Library / Literature & Fiction

Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 2

by Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron Macaulay

Pages
about 239
Category
Literature & Fiction
Language
English
Reading time
4.4 h at 250 wpm
Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 2.4 h at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

The lady will have 1,762,500 children: a large "efflux of the fountain of life," to borrow Mr Sadler's sonorous rhetoric, as the most philoprogenitive parent could possibly desire.

But let us, instead of putting cases of our own, look at some of those which Mr Sadler has brought forward in support of his theory. The following table, he tells us, exhibits a striking proof of the truth of his main position. It seems to us to prove only that Mr Sadler does not know what inverse proportion means.

Cape of Good Hope 1 5.48 North America 4 5.22 Russia in Europe 23 4.94 Denmark 73 4.89 Prussia 100 4.70 France 140 4.22 England 160 3.66

Is 1 to 160 as 3.66 to 5.48? If Mr Sadler's principle were just, the number of children produced by a marriage at the Cape would be, not 5.48, but very near 600. Or take America and France. Is 4 to 140 as 4.22 to 5.22? The number of births to a marriage in North America ought, according to this proportion, to be about 150.

50 100 2 420 100 150 9 396 150 200 16 390 200 250 4 388 250 300 5 378 300 350 3 353 500 600 2 331 4000 and upwards 1 246

"Now, I think it quite reasonable to conclude, that, were there not another document in existence relative to this subject, the facts thus deduced from the census of England are fully sufficient to demonstrate the position, that the fecundity of human beings varies inversely as their numbers. How, I ask, can it be evaded?"

What, we ask, is there to evade? Is 246 to 420 as 50 to 4000? Is 331 to 396 as 100 to 500? If the law propounded by Mr Sadler were correct, the births to a hundred marriages in the least populous part of England, would be 246 x 4000 / 50, that is 19,680,--nearly two hundred children to every mother. But we will not carry on these calculations.

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