POPULATION. The first official census taken of Great Britain was in 1801. Estimates have been made• of the population of England upon the basis of the Domesday record. These' estimates place the total in the latter half of the eleventh century at a little less than 2,000,000. Over half of the population was then centred in Southeastern England—in the counties north and south of London—the Norman Conquest having tion from the south to the north. The lands in the north, which had been so long deserted. have finally become the most densely populated portion of the British Islands. This movement northward assumed full momentum when im proved inventions and methods made it desirable to secure for manufacturing the aid of water power such as was best supplied by the streams of Lancashire and Yorkshire. Still later, when coal and iron became extensively drawn upon, the supply of these minerals also was found to be situated in this northern district. The greater moisture of the atmosphere in this re gion, as indicated above, increased its desirabili ty as a textile manufacturing centre, and con sequently encouraged the growth of its popula tion. The manufacturing and mining district around Manchester and extending southward to Birmingham is the most densely populated district of equal area in Great Britain, or in the world, with the possible exception of certain districts of China. The next five most populous districts are a small region surrounding London, and the Lowland region of Scotland. The density per square mile of the population of the principal divisions of Great Britain in 1901 was: England, 606; Wales, 230; Scotland, 150. The population of these kingdoms together with Ireland for the years 1821, 1861, and 1901 will be seen in the following table, together with the percentage of the total population of the United Kingdom which each country constituted in these respec tive years, and also the percentage of increase of each country for the decade 1891-1901: depopulated vast districts in Northern England. Investigators claim that it took over five cen turies to double this figure, the grdatest increase being made in the Elizabethan reign, after which time the population remained stationary for a century and a half. The lack of communication resulted in frequent starvation periods in numer ous localities. This, together with occasional plagues, prevented a regular and normal in crease. The great modern growth in population is contemporaneous with the change in the in The increasing importance of the manufactur ing and the mining industries as against agri culture has given England a larger percentage of urban population than is found for any other country. In 1901 the urban population amounted to 77 per cent. of the total in England and Wales, and 75.3 per cent, in Scotland. The great concentration of population is strikingly brought out in the following table, which is taken from a study made of England and Wales for the ninety-year period 1801-91: dustrial system and the improvement in means of communication. The most remarkable feature
in this development is the drift of the popula It will be seen that the population of the 283 largest towns was in 1891 nearly five times that in 1801, while on the contrary the large rural area, which in 1801 contained nearly half of the total population, made only an in significant gain compared with that of the whole country, and actually suffered a decrease in the last thirty-year period. A study of Scotland would reveal a similar movement of the popula tion. The following table shows the population for towns having above 200,000 inhabitants in 1901. There are sixteen such towns as against nineteen for the United States, although the population in the latter country is more than twice that of Great Britain. London's steady growth has kept it far in advance of all other cities of the world in population.
The gain in the population of Great Britain has been made in spite of the fact that so many of its inhabitants have migrated to its colonial possessions, or other countries. The largest exo dus was during the period of 1880 to 1893, when the English emigration averaged over 150,000 an nually, and the Scotch over 95,000 annually. Since that period the emigration has averaged less than two-thirds of this total amount. This is proportionately much less, however, than the emigration from Ireland. (See IRELAND. ) The United States received about two-thirds of the whole number. At the time of the famine in Ireland (1845 and subsequent years), a large number of Irish came to Great Britain, and in recent years there has been an increase in the immigration from other countries to Great Bri tain, Russian and Polish Jews, Belgians, and Germans being the most numerous. The figures for the immigration and for the emigration in Great Britain at the end of the nineteenth century were almost equal. The immigrants in 1900 were 175,747, against 151,369 in 1891. In 1901 there were 15,721,728 males and 16,804,347 females in England and Wales; in Scotland, 1,942,717 males and 2,082,930 females. The birth-rate is de creasing, being, for England and \Vales, 29.3 per thousand living persons in 1899, as against 35 in 1871. The loss in the growth of population is largely offset by the decrease in the death rate which in 1871 was 22.6 to each thousand individuals, as against 18.3 in 1899. The mar riage-rate for the United Kingdom in 1899 was 16.5 per thousand of the population.' In 1891 there was 51.2 per cent. of the population of Wales and Monmouthshire who could speak Welsh, 22.6 per cent, of whom could speak Eng lish also. Tn 1881 70 per cent. of the population could speak Welsh. In 1891 there was 6.32 per cent. of the population in Scotland who could speak Gaelic, which was slightly greater than the corresponding percentage in 1881. Those who spoke Gaelic only numbered 1.09 percent. of the population. See IRELAND.