The Press.
London, England, 1853-11-26 00:00:00

RESI'LTS OF THE CENSUS.

RITEATEII, as a matter of cour4e, every ten years. the
task of "numbering the people" in the United King-
dom becomes upon every repetition more laborious,
and its results accumulate in more complicated and
ponderous masses ; for not only do the numbers to
be reckoned rapidly expand at the rate of more than
two million units . between one census date and

another, but the combinations and classifications into
which those units are united or distributed become
more various and minute as experience shows them
to be necessary, or 144 the public grow interested and
exigeant in the matter of statistical science.
Both causes combined have rendered the census
returns compiled in 1P451 far inure magnitieent in
proportions than any of their predecessors. Their
vaned details are, of course, correspondingly valua-
ble, though the nn value is not to be appreciated
just yet. Their chief use will be disclosed hereafter,
when the social politician comes to build upon the
foundation of facts which he will find in these tables
the practical laws whereby industry is to be encou-
raged, crime repressed, or education extended. Or,
at a still more remote era, when half a dozen de-
cennial periods have run their course and furnished
their similar returns, the future historian of England
will turn them to a yet grander purpose, as the means
of comparison by which to trace the growth and pro-
gress of the British empire and its inhabitants—
their expansion of numbers, their changes in loca-
lity, occupation, and social habitudes, their im
'movement in moral, mental, and physical condition—
all the modifications, in short, which a people
undergo by process of time, and which, under the
general denomination of "social status," represent
the moat important and most exalted particulars
that ran ever occupy the pages of history.

lint the present interest of these enumeration
tables is far from insignificant. IVithout purposing
to draw up a bill in Parliament, or draw out a new
scheme for the philosophy of history, there are a
multitude of facts bearing a very near relationship to
our present well-being, or innnediately-future pros-
pects of comfort and prosperity, to be gathered from
this ntultitudinotts array of figures, well deserv-
ing our serious contemplation. Some of these re-
sults we will now lay before our readers, culling them
for that purpose from a highly valuable pamphlet
lately published by Mr. Cheshire, a member of the
Statistical Society, and one of the secretaries to the
statistical section of the British Association. Into
this pamphlet, by a laborious process of selection and
condensation, the author has succeeded in packing
all the most important totals, averages, and compa-
rative schedules from which the eensus tables derive
their principal features of interest. First, however,
we must endeavour to give sonic idea of the magni-
tude in simple bulk of printed matter of the work
upon which the winnowing process has to be exer-
cised, and which, we may remark, is, after all, only
portion of the entire mass of " returns " growing out
of the census of " Three thick folio volumes,"
says Mr. Cheshire, "containing some two thousand
pages of einidensed and analysed matter sufficiently
attest the labours of the Registrar-General and his
able assistants; but the folios must be studied in
order adequately to appreciate the amount of thought
required to carry a census into effect, and to embody
the results in a book of such magnittulo and in-
t vein."

11e have not space to cite the interesting detail
given by the author of the machinery by which the
raw material for these "three thick folio volumes"
was originally prepared. It may suffice to state that
the whole surface of Great Britain and its islands
was divided into 3t4,74.0 "districts" for the purposes
of enumeration, to caulk of which a separate Minnie-
rator was appointed; with some additional force ein.
ploy 4.4 to reckon up the individuals engaged
on board ship, on canals, in harbours, or in
any way non-resident at the flatulent selected for the
enumeration upon terra firma. Every one of these
enumerators was required to take the " state of the
poll " in his own district upon the same preordained
night. For this purpose seven million " house-
holders' schedules." OA they were called, were trans-
mitted through their hands to the heads of every
household in Great Ilritain, and were collected again,
when tilled up, on the morrow of the appointed day.
'the mere weight of paper thus employed, including
the enumerators' books, was not less than 5•2 tons.
Two weeks were spent by the 35,7-10 enumerotrs ill
transcribing the returns. which then passed into the
hands 0f3,210 registrars, by whom some further time
was devoted to a rough revision and summary of their
contents. From them the papers were transferred to
Ott superintendent registrars, who revised the re-
visions and summarised the summaries. Two
months after the census day the whole mass got as
far as the central census-office, then comprising the
4,3410,000 district householders returns, the 3/4,l'4ti
enumeration books, the 3,220 first and the
(24 second summaries. Altogether there was a pretty
total ut. some 10 millions of entries, tilling ups arils
of 1 million pages of manuscript hooks. Every one
of these entries wits afresh examined, checked, re-