In 1746 was published the Essay of M. Depar cieux, which has been already mentioned in the his torical introduction to the article ANNUITIES in this Supplement : information much wanted on this sub ject, was there given in a very clear and popular manner, and the work no doubt contributed greatly to the advancement of the science. It probably had some influence in promoting the establishment of what is called the Tabellvarket in Sweden, which took place in 1749, and of which we shall have oc casion to take further notice presently.
_ which he had " had on the anvil" for eighteen years, as he informs us in the Preface to his History of Air, Weather, &c. This author, with incredible labour, collected extracts from the mortuary and baptismal registers in a great many market-towns and country parishes in England, chiefly in the northern counties, in almost every variety of soil and situation, and re duced them into tables in various ways, so as to enable him to draw useful inferences from them.
He informs us that Lord Cromwell's injunction in 1538 was but little regarded in many places till the year 1559, when another was issued for the same purpose by Queen Elizabeth ; nevertheless, he had procured several exact country registers, commen cing with 1538, and continued, without one chasm, for more than two hundred years ; and the registers before 1644, he considered to be much more valuable than afterwards, on account of the increase of dis . senters from that time. He likewise procured both the numbers of families and of souls in seven of the market-towns, and fifty-four of the country parishes, for which he -bad registers; and thus arrived at sa tisfactory information on several points, which, till then, had been very imperfectly understood. But the sexes were not distinguished in his enumera tions ; neither were the ages, in any of the enume rations or registers he has given accounts of, except in the London Bills of Mortality, and what he has taken from Dr Halley, respecting those for Bres Although Dr Short took so much trouble in col lecting materials, and has generally reasoned well upon them, he has shown but little skill, and does not appear to have taken much pains in communi cating his information to his readers; so that it costs them considerable labour to find what they want, es pecially in his tables ; and when found, to under stand it.
. In 1751 was first printed a tract by Corbyn Mor ris, entitled, Observations on the past growth and present state of the City of London, with the most convenient and instructive tables of the London bills that have been printed: they contained the annual baptisms and burials from the year 1603, the num .
ber of annual deaths by each disease from 1675, and of each age from 1728; all brought down to the year 1750. This tract was reprinted in 1758, with a con tinuation of the tables to the end of 1757 ; these also contain useful annual averages and proportions. Mr Morris's observations are generally very judici ous, but he was one of those authors who appear to have laboured under much misconception with re gard to the evils to be apprehended from the mor tality of London, and what they considered to be its baneful effects in drawing recruits from the country. These writers did not perceive, or did not sufficiently consider, that the natural "procreative power is much more than adequate to supply any waste of that kind, and that the real obstacle to the increase of the peo ple, is the limited means of subsistence. This had been observed by Dr Halley in his Further Consi derations on the Breslau Bills of Mortality (Phil. Trans. 1693), though it there also appears, that he had not sufficiently considered the mode of its ope ration : this was first fully illustrated by Dr Franklin in his excellent Observations on the Increase of Man kind, Peopling of Countries, &c. written in Philadel phia in 1751, the same year in which Mr Morris's pamphlet was first published. The author also point ed out in that pamphlet, material defects in the Bills of Mortality, and proposed a better method of keep ing them, not only in London, but throughout the kingdom. This gave occasion to a paper by Mr James Dodson, which was inserted in the Philoso phical Transactions for that year (1751), wherein he showed the importance of their being so kept as to afford the means of valuing annuities on lives, and proposed other alterations which appeared to him calculated to fit them for the purpose.