In all cases, he has given the general results of his tables, and the proportions they afford, very dis tinctly stated ; and among these results, the increase of the population during the preceding 60 years, to which his researches were generally limited, is clearly ascertained.
The work also contains many interesting tables, in which the rate of mortality, and the produce of ma nufacturing labour, are compared with the contem. peraneous prices of grain, in various places, general ly for periods of 20 years each.
Murat, premier Pasteur a Vevey, et Secretaire de is • Societe CEconontique Is Vevey.
The Pays de Vaud contains 112 parishes, and the population at that time was about 113,000 souls. M. Muret wrote for information to all the clergymen in the country, who made him returns of the num bers of baptisms and burials in their respective pa. rishes, for different periods, from 10 to 40 years, in many of which both the ages and sexes were din. tinguished ; and from about two-thirds of them he obtained also the numbers of marriages and families actually subsisting ; also the number of souls, " or. at least of communicants," in their parishes: but neither the ages nor sexes were distinguished in any of the enumerations of the living.
This performance does much credit both to the author's industry and judgment, but it has also ma. terial defects. He gave upwards of 60 tables, by which he intended to show the probabilities and ex. pectations of life till five years of age, and at every fifth year after that, in different. perishes and places, under various circumstances of soil and situation, and for people of different habits and occupations ; also for the two sexes separately. These must have cost him a good deal of labour, and would have been extremely valuable had they been correct ; but, un fortunately, be did not understand the construction of such tables, and they are not to be depended upon. He also took considerable pains to determine the rates of mortality among married and single wo men, considered separately, and thought he had proved that it was less among the married; but the proofs he adduced were not conclusive. Some of
his observations on the state of the population, and the plans he recommended for increasing it, also show, that he did not understand the principle on which its progress depends.
It is with much reluctance that we make, on so respectable an author, remarks which apply equally to almost all his predecessors in these inquiries ; but this we consider to be rendered necessary, by the Memoir generally, and the Tables in particular, hav ing been praised for their extreme accuracy, in a .
very good abridgment of them, inserted in the se cond volume of a book, entitled De Re Rustica, or the Reposito7y, 8vo, London, 1770.
The disadvantages of her soil and climate neces eerily - keep Sweden thinly peopled in comparison with the countries which, in these respects, are more happily circumstanced; and since the year 1748, the "tate of the population has been an object of anxious solicitude with the government ; which, in 1749, established what, in this country, would probably be called a Board of Population (but is there denomi nated Tabellvarket), for reducing into convenient forms the extracts from the parish registers, and the returns from the magistrates of the numbers of the people, which the governors of the different pro ' vinees are required to state to the commissioners appointed for these purposes. The extracts from the registers are made and transmitted annually, but the enumerations only once in three years.
Printed forms, with proper blanks, distinguishing the ages and sexes, both of the living and the dead, with the diseases the deaths were occasioned by, are distributed throughout the country, to enable the people to make these returns correctly and uniform ly ; and the information thus acquired, respecting the state of population and mortality, is much more cor rect and satisfactory than what has been obtained in any other place of considerable extent ; but from causes which we have not room to explain here, the results were not laid before the public until some years after the returns were made.