CENSUS (Lat., registration, from ccnscre, to assess, to judge). The familiar use of the word census is to denote the periodical counting of the people, and this is its primary meaning. As the of population has been usually accom panied by comprehensive investigations into agriculture, manufactures, ete.. the tern' has collie to be employed for any statistical investi gation which proceeds by the method of direct interrogation. Used in this broad way the name census designates one of the two methods of statistical research, the other being registration. Census and registration are not interchangeable, but one is frequently used as a substitute for the other. A census portrays conditions at a given time, a register the changes which take place. As two successive censuses by comparison show the resultant of these changes, we can, under certain circumstances, by smnming it the changes. arrive at the general condition of affairs without a direct. enumeration.
.Inteccdcals of the ecnsus.—The origin of the American census in the well-known constitu tional provision that representation and direct taxation should be proportional to population. suggest: the intimate connection between census and government necessities. That similar necessities in early days gave rise to enumerations of the people will be readily understood. We find references to counting the people in our accounts of ancient peoples like the lIebrews and the Romans. China' and .Tapan also have records of very early enumerations. These records seem to have been undertaken for fiscal or military purposes. to establish the ownership of landed property or to determine military contingents, and involved a count of the people not as the main issue but as an incident. In this they differed from the census operations of to-day.
This is likewise true of such reeords as that of the Domesday Book frequently pointed out as illustrations of statistical practice during the :Middle Ages. Indeed. a direct enumeration of the \Oink people having no other object in view than to ascertain their number. lirst took place
with the census of the United States in 1790, and the principal development of the census occurred in the Nineteenth Century. llefore that tune there had been, in several European States, efforts directed to as•ertaining the number of Inc people or of particular classes. Perhaps the most comprehensive of these efforts took place in Sweden. In ltP li parish registers were intro duced, in which not only births and deaths. but also arrivals and departures were to be noted.
The most usual form of the census is the census of population, recurring at regular tervals of live or ten years, as the ease may be. The of regular census-taking by the United States in 1700 has already been noted. England, !Tolland, and Norway followed in 1801. In France a census. took place in 1801, but after that irregularly until 1831, when the regular series begins. In Prussia a census was taken in 1816, but without, any instructions to the local authorities. who were free to use their own diseretion in the matter. It was hardly until the middle of the Nineteenth Century, as we shall see in reviewing the history of census taking in the 'United States, that methods a• quired stability.
By Illt.ans of those registers the number of the population was ascertained, and beginning with 1749 comprehensive :statements for the entire land were published. Such population registers from which, in lieu of an enumeration, the num ber of the population can be ascertained, exist to-day in many places. It was mainly from such registers that the early notices of the popu lation of Prussia and Austria were paltered. To them should be added the reports made from time to time by the administrative Olives of the various districts of the number of persons, espe cially of those capable of bearing arms, under their In all this we see the be ginnings of the modern census.