Mankind and Political Arithmetic | Page 7

want at present.
As for the time in which the people double, it is yet more hard to be
found. For we have good experience (in the said page 94 of the
aforementioned observations) that in the country but 1 of 50 die per
annum; and by other late accounts, that there have been sometimes but
24 births for 23 burials. The which two points, if they were universally
and constantly true, there would be colour enough to say that the
people doubled but in about 1,200 years. As, for example, suppose

there be 600 people, of which let a fiftieth part die per annum, then
there shall die 12 per annum; and if the births be as 24 to 23, then the
increase of the people shall be somewhat above half a man per annum,
and consequently the supposed number of 600 cannot be doubled but in
1,126 years, which, to reckon in round numbers, and for that the
aforementioned fractions were not exact, we had rather call 1,200.
There are also other good observations, that even in the country one in
about 30 or 32 per annum hath died, and that there have been five births
for four burials. Now, according to this doctrine, 20 will die per annum
out of the above 600, and 25 will be born, so as the increase will be five,
which is a hundred and twentieth part of the said 600. So as we have
two fair computations, differing from each other as one to ten; and
there are also several other good observations for other measures.
I might here insert, that although the births in this last computation be
25 of 600, or a twenty-fourth part of the people, yet that in natural
possibility they may be near thrice as many, and near 75. For that by
some late observations, the teeming females between 15 and 44 are
about 180 of the said 600, and the males of between 18 and 59 are
about 180 also, and that every teeming woman can bear a child once in
two years; from all which it is plain that the births may be 90 (and
abating 15 for sickness, young abortions, and natural barrenness), there
may remain 75 births, which is an eighth of the people, which by some
observations we have found to be but a two-and-thirtieth part, or but a
quarter of what is thus shown to be naturally possible. Now, according
to this reckoning, if the births may be 75 of 600, and the burials but 15,
then the annual increase of the people will be 60; and so the said 600
people may double in ten years, which differs yet more from 1,200
above- mentioned. Now, to get out of this difficulty, and to temper
those vast disagreements, I took the medium of 50 and 30 dying per
annum, and pitched upon 40; and I also took the medium between 24
births and 23 burials, and 5 births for 4 burials, viz., allowing about 10
births for 9 burials; upon which supposition there must die 15 per
annum out of the above-mentioned 600, and the births must be 16 and
two-thirds, and the increase one and two-thirds, or five-thirds of a man,
which number, compared with 1,800 thirds, or 600 men, gives 360
years for the time of doubling (including some allowance for wars,
plagues, and famines, the effects thereof), though they be terrible at the

times and places where they happen, yet in a period of 360 years is no
great matter in the whole nation. For the plagues of England in twenty
years have carried away scarce an eightieth part of the people of the
whole nation; and the late ten years' civil wars (the like whereof hath
not been in several ages before) did not take away above a fortieth part
of the whole people.
According to which account or measure of doubling, if there be now in
England and Wales 7,400,000 people, there were about 5,526,000 in
the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign, A.D. 1560, and about
2,000,000 at the Norman Conquest, of which consult the Doomsday
Book, and my Lord Hale's "Origination of Mankind."
Memorandum.--That if the people double in 360 years, that the present
320,000,000 computed by some learned men (from the measures of all
the nations of the world, their degrees of being peopled, and good
accounts of the people in several of them) to be now upon the face of
the earth, will within the next 2,000 years so increase as to give one
head for every two acres of land in the habitable part of the earth. And
then, according to the prediction of the Scriptures, there must be wars,
and great slaughter, &c.
Wherefore, as an expedient against the above-mentioned difference
between