well defined at each numbering, whereas there is some confusion as to the definition of country towns at different times. But take London alone. When the population of England in 1801 was under nine millions, that of London was 958,863. The capital and the kingdom have grown together, but the former has always grown faster; so that while England (including London) mounted from nearly 9 millions in 1801 to nearly 26 in 1881, London grew from 958,863 to 3,816,483 in 1881. London more than quadrupled its people, while England (including London) did not quite triple it; England (excluding London) advanced in a still smaller proportion; and it will be seen that England, excluding all its big towns, exhibits a still feebler advance. But note this point about London. Its limits increase. If we had a series of maps shaded so as to show the population, we should see the black central spot of London getting bigger and bigger the wen which Cobbett detested and denounced growing more and more portentous in size-but though the black spot grew bigger, yet its centre grew lighter and lighter; and by the centre is not meant that strictly limited area called the City, but something more like what London was when the century began. Take, in fact, the area occupied by the mass of those 958,863 who constituted the population of London in 1801, and fewer persons will be found living upon it, while around it lies a widening ring, growing blacker as the centre whitens. Whilst, however, London has grown so enormously in population and in so great a proportion compared with the rest of the kingdom, its rate of increase has not been at all commensurate with that of many provincial towns, nor has it been equal to that of the towns of England as a whole. Speaking of these towns as a whole, it seems a fair estimate to say that of the nine millions living in England and Wales in 1801, three millions lived in towns. This errs, if at all, in making the town population too large a proportion of the whole. Of the twenty-six millions of 1881, nearly fifteen and a half millions lived in towns; or, if we follow the Registrar-General in ranking as townsmen all who live in urban sanitary districts, more than seventeen and a half millions were townsmen. The inhabitants of towns have increased at least fivefold; the inhabitants of the country at the most by 75 per cent. The town population was onethird of the whole; the Registrar-General's calculation would make it two-thirds. Diverging for a moment from the proper order of inquiry, it may be remarked that this phenomenon of the relative increase of the town population is not confined to England. It may not have reached the same proportion of the whole in any other country, but it has grown at an even greater rate elsewhere. Two examples may suffice. In Norway the town population was 9 per cent. in 1801; this had grown to 18.1 per cent. in 1875, and it is now 22 per cent. In the United States the proportion was only 3.9 per cent. of the whole in 1800; it was 22.5 per cent. in 1880

Thus in Norway, which practically receives no immigrants, the proportion of the town population had increased somewhat more than in England, while in the United States, instead of doubling, it had multiplied 5 times. If, passing from the town population of England and Wales as a whole, attention is directed to the movement of increase of the separate towns, constant fluctuations will be found in the rate of growth, each successive decade bringing some different centre to the front as the scene of greatest relative increase. It would be tedious to go through many illustrations of this in detail, and it would be difficult, for the arbitrary boundaries of our towns confuse inquirers and tax the patience and ingenuity of the RegistrarGeneral and his assistants. In some cases the examination would be misleading. Birkenhead, for example, is often cited as an instance of most rapid expansion, and indeed it numbered something like 700 inhabitants in 1801 and 84,000 in 1881, a number since largely increased; but Birkenhead is properly a suburb of Liverpool, and should not be considered apart from it. An examination of true centres of life leads us inevitably to connect the shifting of points of maximum increase with the development of some industry, the discovery of some local springs of activity, a new appreciation of previously unrecognised facilities for the application of more efficient processes of labour. Some change makes it possible for more life to be sustained at a given spot, or to be more favourably sustained than elsewhere, and immediately more life appears there. In one decade the hosiery district of Leicester leads the van; in another the maximum growth may shift to the homes of the cotton industry; in another the black country is foremost; or, again, the shipping ports, the colliery centres, the fields of rich iron deposits compete with one another as points about which there is the most rapid accumulation of human life. But here we must note a difference. When the population of England and Wales was regarded as a whole, and the question asked whether its growth was due in part to immigration or arose from its own powers of increase, the answer was, that in spite of a large inflowing, mainly from other divisions of the kingdom, England gave forth more than it received, and on the balance lost population through the migrating of men. This cannot be said of the towns. They owe much of their increase to a perpetual movement from the country. Certain forces of attraction are seen to be always in operation, drawing life away from where it came into existence to expend its activity elsewhere. As it matures it moves from a birth-place to a work-place. Sometimes, as in London, it is a hiding-place which is sought; but even in London those who wish to conceal past errors (and too commonly follow them up with worse) are but a small part of the invading army. This internal mobility is a phenomenon worth attention. It becomes more and more developed as the century

'This subject was very well examined and illustrated in a paper by Mr. Ravenstein (Journal of the Statistical Society, June 1885).

advances; the facility of movement being notoriously greater, and the spirit of movement growing apace with facility. There is not a county in the kingdom the population of which would not increase if those who were born in it remained there. Everywhere births outnumber deaths, and the census might be expected to reveal an increase. Not indeed always at the same rate. In some (Glamorganshire, Durham) this unchecked growth would be double, or more than double, what it would be in others (Devon, Cornwall, Cardigan, &c.) But to those that have it shall be given. In those countries where the Registrar-General looked for the greatest natural increase he found it swollen by an abundant immigration; where the increase was naturally least, it was diminished or had been turned into a decrease by emigration. In 1881 it was found that twelve counties (calling the metropolis one)-and these being precisely the counties of big towns-had added to their own increase by absorption from without, twenty-six had kept a part only of the additions due to the overplus of births, and in thirteen the birth growth and more had gone, leaving an actual decline in numbers. Lancashire kept the largest proportion of its natives at home, yet received largely from without, and it was consequently among those that showed the greatest increase; Cornwall received the fewest from without and parted largely with its natives, and it showed the greatest decline (nearly 9 per cent.) It has been already said that there were twelve other counties showing an absolute decline in numbers, and it may be added there were eight others that barely kept up their population. If we run over the list of names we should say that, with the exception of that which heads it, they may all be called agricultural counties. We are here opening new ground. The population of England and Wales has multiplied threefold. The town population has multiplied fivefold, the inhabitants of the country not more than 75 per cent. Does the declining population of a dozen agricultural counties and the stationary population of another eight indicate an actual decline of the agricultural population, and a transfer of force to other industries?

Turning to the enumeration of occupations made at the census we find this had happened. The agricultural population had fallen off some 8 or 9 per cent., and the Registrar-General pointed out that, while the total land under cultivation had increased in the decade by more than a million acres, the arable had decreased by nearly a million, and the number of owners and workers of agricultural machines had doubled. In the years which have since elapsed there has been a still further conversion of arable into pasture (600,000 acres), and there has doubtless been a further increase in agricultural machinists. The internal movement of the people is thus associated with and in part produced by a shifting of occupations, implying as much a decline in the opportunities of occupation in one direction as an increase of them in another. As the new generation rises and becomes a power, it seeks its work and finds it, sometimes at

home, sometimes further afield, sometimes pursuing the work of the preceding generation, sometimes new work, and, whether pursuing new work or old, sometimes shifting the scene of its labours. The movement so far contemplated does not indeed go beyond the five seas; but we cannot forget that outpouring of English life which has been mentioned as more than counterbalancing all importations; and in this connection one word more may be forgiven in reference to that county in which I own a particular interest, where the decrease of population, begun in 1861-71, was most marked in the decade 1871-81. The other declining counties may be agricultural, but Cornwall is better known as a mining area, and an examination of details proves that it is the mining population which most diminished in it. According to the Registrar-General the tin miners fell off one-third in the ten years ending 1881; he does not mention the reduction in copper miners, but the production of British copper fell off from 21,294 tons in 1855 to 1,471 tons in 1886; and the present boom can scarcely reverse this decline. The process of diminution of the mining population has been continuously maintained; and the point for consideration is whether this outgoing flood of men has been directed to other than ancestral employments in other parts of England or has passed to employment such as their fathers practised, but on foreign shores. Are we face to face with expatriation consequent on the decline of a special occupation at home? The answer is that the attraction of a similar employment has been most potent; it has been irresistible where the emigrant has been fully trained to pursue it. Our Cornish miners are found wherever mines are being newly worked all over the globe, and the same fact which has led to their removal from the country has led to their removal from England. Tin and copper, once worked almost exclusively in Cornwall, have been found in greater abundance and freer accessibility elsewhere, and to the richer deposits the men have moved. The phenomenon may be better realised if for a moment we convert the Cornish peninsula into an island, and then summarise the situation. Here, it would be said, is a sea-girt spot where men settled and throve and multiplied because it possessed almost a monopoly of one mineral and a great superiority in the production of another most serviceable to man. So its population prospered and multiplied until it was discovered that these metals could be mined with no more, and even with less, labour elsewhere, and the preeminence became an equality or an inferiority, and the population dwindled as it had multiplied, until it reached proportions more agreeable to its diminished pretensions. But though the population sank as it had risen, it did not pass out of existence into nothingness as it had come from non-existence into being. It sprang into life to fulfil a service to man. It flitted away because that service could be more easily fulfilled elsewhere, and if the dwellers within the little isle were fewer, there was more without it. If we have to contemplate a similar

movement in other islands, we may remember its compensations as well as its penalties.

If the movement of population in Scotland be examined it will be found to exhibit precisely the same characteristics as in England. The proportional increase during the century has not been so great, but there has been a continuous increase there as here, and that in the same varying fashion. The rate was highest in the decade 1811-21, when it was nearly 16 per cent.; it was lowest in 1851-61, when it was no more than 6 per cent. There has been the same growth of town population over that of the country; the same influx to industrial districts, whether manufacturing towns or coal fields; and the same recession from purely agricultural counties. So, again, there has been the same outflow from Scotland as a whole, so that the total population enumerated at each census has never been as much as the excess of births over deaths would have indicated. The decline of population in the rural counties set in earlier and extended over a larger area than in England; but, as the movement began earlier, so it abated in the last decade, when that of England went on increasing. It may be said that the tide took some time to travel; it flowed in Scotland first, it passed on southwards; but as far as can be discovered the same forces were at work in both North and South Britain, producing phenomena identical in character.

Are the forces different that have been at work in Ireland? There are obvious and striking differences in the range and intensity of the phenomena exhibited. In each division of Great Britain there has been an increase of population in every successive census. In Ireland every enumeration from 1851 downwards has shown a diminution. The numbers were first accurately taken in 1821, when they were 6,800,000; they had certainly risen since 1801, probably from about 5,500,000, and they continued to rise so that they were more than 8,000,000 in 1841; but they fell off nearly 20 per cent. in the next ten years, and have declined, though with diminishing intensity, ever since. In 1881 they were but 5,175,000 and are now estimated at 4,853,000. And, turning to details, it appears that this decline in the population of the island as a whole arises from a diminution in nearly every part. Since 1841 there has been a falling off in the population of every county except Antrim and Dublin; in the decade 1841-51 Dublin was the solitary county that maintained its numbers. Those years of visitation were indeed years of the severest experiences. There was not in those days any general system of registration of births and deaths in Ireland, but the conclusion seems inevitable that in the year 1846, and perhaps for some months before, the deaths exceeded the births. A large emigration followed the famine, but, great as were its dimensions, it does not account for all the diminution of population during the critical time. The falling off of subsequent years is fully explained by the outflow