An estimate of the comparative strength of Britain during the present and four preceding reigns; and of the losses of her trade from every war since the Revolution ... To which is added an essay on population / by the Lord Chief Justice Hale.
- George Chalmers
- Date:
- 1782
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: An estimate of the comparative strength of Britain during the present and four preceding reigns; and of the losses of her trade from every war since the Revolution ... To which is added an essay on population / by the Lord Chief Justice Hale. Source: Wellcome Collection.
168/210 page 154
![E IS4 ] ^ue ito acutenefs of inveftigation, though they muft be denied the honours that certainty of demonftration always may claim. Fearlefs however of the confequences that might be drawn from his reafonings, becaufe he thought he argued on the fide of truth. Dr. Price concluded ’ from his previous calculations and con- jediurest that *rhe inhabitants of England and Wales muji have been Jhort of 5,000,000 in 1777 ' Yet there were found in England and Wales, as we have ) , • feen‘ — — — — — i 4*690,696 m 1575 : Whence we ought to infer, that the numbers of our people now are nearly equal to thofe of Queen Elizabeth’s days. Having fhifted his original ground, as he advanced in his refearches. Dr. Price does not hefitate to compare the populoufnefs of his country during the prefent reign, fo much with the inhabitants exifting at the epoch of the Revolution^, as with thofe exifting at the more diftant a^ra of the Reformation^ And this deduction that able inveftigator infer- red, partly from temper, but more from reafonings which fatisfied his own judgment, whatever convidtion they may convey to the minds of others: ** That it is probable the civil war in the time of Charles I. and the emigrations which then took place, lelTened the number of people in the kingdom; and therefore in Queen Eliza- beth’s time, or about the Reformation, the number of inhabitants in England might have been greater than it was even at the Revolu- tion, agreeably to the fadts mentioned at the end of my Appeal to the Public'on the fubjedt of the National Debt, p. 87 , dec.” The reader has already determined how contradidtory thefe charadteriftic inferences are to the before-mentioned proofs and to the opinions of Mr. King, Lord Hale, Sir William Petty, and Major Graunt. The population of the given periods of Dr. Price, have been already afeertained with the requiiite certainty’': Thus, the number of fouls in 1695. were in 157s in 1377 in io66' 6,017,797 4,690,696 2,811,204 2,C00,000 Wev • Eflay on Pop. p. 14. ' Before p. 105. EfTay on Pop. p. 13, an the notes, * See before, p, 99—105—116.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28757671_0168.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
