The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-11 00:00:00

TIMM---Mlrriage is an impor!ant is well a- i
rioration.
holy thing. Nothing can be aounder • e
4,, ~ d
trine that a nation is in a bed way w s ' r '"
riages among its pepulation decline hi title er i l' i
fact is proof either of public distress or c
It is beyond
statistics, but it is .very desirable that mete lain
meaning should not be tnisteken. Just now, the
SW-I, there must be fluetuetiee- ,11 ~u:-/1
returns on this head are rather remarkable, but we
doubt_ whether we have been correctly apprehended.
question that the marriages in the
whole kingdom were below the average for the whole
year 1861—the last annual reckoning published by
the Registrar-General. It is also certain that the
decline was distinctly marked in the manufacturing
diatricts, but we are by no means sure that the in-
fluence of the Cotton Famine is the matter has not
been materially overrated. When wo read in the
marriages in
report that in a certain
quarter of the year 1861 the
a similar period in the year preceding, declined from
1,285 to 1,150; in Ashton, from 312 to 271 ; in
Blackburn, from
Manche
412 to 288 ; in Preston, from 355
to 254 ; and in
Stockport, from 332 to 218, it is
impossible to deny that the incipient paralysis of
the cotton industry might really have been then
affecting the returns of the year. Yet this influence
could not have been so powerful as was supposed.
The Quarter which we have
quoted was the fourth
Quarter, and, indeed,
we could hardly have looked
for much effect of the blockade before that time.
Bat the report shows that the whole year was more
or less unfavourable to marriages,
and especially
the first quarter of it, when the cotton supply had
experienced no interruption, and the Civil War in
America had not broken out. In poiet of fact, it
was the weather which at this
period was the ob-
structive agent. Most readers will retain a lively
recollection of the Christmas of 1860, its intense
frosts and its snow. The extreme severity of the
season and the dearness of provisions rendered the
period " eminently unpropitious," and contributed
much to that decline whieti is
Year. The second and third quarters, again, succes-
sively visible upon the whole
average, but still the prospective. cotton famine could
not have been especially in fault, for.. the same phe-
nomenon failed to bring the marriage rate up to the
in
divisions of the kingdom. It is evident, short,
upon an attentive inspection of these statistics,. that
was observable in the majority of the great
61 was due to the operation of
distin-
guishes the year 18
causes rather than to the
in-
fluencegeneral and ordoinnea
the decline in the number of marriages which
.eryxtraordinary agency. We can
of any
also go one
step fther.
decline, such as it tnen was, exhibited no alarming
.ur.. We can show that this
or uncommon proportions. Nobody examining the
be induced by the figures for 1831 to suspect that
dented misfortune had • befallen the
any unprecedented tables of these statistics for the last 20 years would
no doubt, Mince
ing off in the marriages, _ . the total
whereas, according
to 63,706 for all
countryin thatyeafrro:mTlh7eolsi6s aveiry distinct fall-
numbers dropped Wales
have risen little 28 the pope-
together, a -
Taut such fluctuationg
Englandtul
aont
uriousnule:, theyli.n
ear
Tne
increased.
shouldsned.years
ago,
are not
;or .octunck,,—that is to
say, in the year
1853,—
amounted themarriagee, thDrtgh
ois the returns for 1861.
among a smaller population, to 164,510,
being actually in excess f
But two years later—that to say, in 1855—they
had fallen to 152,113. Again, in 1858 the figure
dropped from 150,027,
the number for 1857, to
156,070. The years 1840 and 1842 also fell off
from the returns of their predecessors, though not
materially; but in 1817 the marriages, which had
been upwards of 145,000 in 1846, declined at a
sweep to 135,845. There is nothing, therefore, in
the figures now before us to create any astonish-
ment. No doubt, 1861 wee rather a bad year for
marriages, but the falling off in the numbers was
not so large as we have seen on former occasions,
and it was not due in any great degree to the Cot-
ton Famine. But the last quarterly return of the
Registrar-General, just issued, announces an unex-
pected revival. The reader is probably aware that
in these Reports the marriage return is always three
months in arrear of the others, so that, whereas we
get the births and deaths up to June 30, we get the
marriages only up to March 31, Yet in that quar-
ter—the first of the current yeare-they were de-
cidedly increasing in some of the chief districts
affected by the Cotton Famine. In Manchester the
figures rose from 951 in 1861, and 830 in 1862, to
1,006 last spring. In Chortton, also, there was a
considerable increase, and in Salford too. In other
districts the tide was still setting the other way, and
possibly, as the Registrar-General observes, there
have been movements of population affecting these
results. Nevertheless, in spite of the destruction of
our greatest industry arid the impoverishment of
our richest communities, the national marriage
rate for the first quarter of the present year is re-
ported above the average. So broad, in fact, is the
area of these surveys, and so numerous are the ele-
ments at work upon the results, that we may per-
haps find lighter traces of the Cotton Famine than
we expect even in the complete reports of 1862 and
1863. The Cotton districts, after all, are but a frac-
tion of England, and if any eases should combine
to stimulate trade and encourage industry in other
great centres of population as they seem to have
done in the metropolis, the decline to be anticipated
in the marriages of Lancashire may be compensated
by increase elsewhere. We have already learnt that
cotton is not such a King as was supposed, and that
the destinies of England are not under his rule.
The cotton trade has been struck out from the in-
dustries of the country for a whole year with less
effect upon the business of the nation than anybody
could have imagined. Some analogous result we
may possibly discover in the Registrar-General's
future returns. We see, in feat, in the tables now
before us that the progresa,of the nation is but im-
perceptibly affected by any of the vicissitudes which
are successively chronicled. The great body moves
on like one of those migratory glaciers described
by geologists, with a slow but irresistible course,
grinding out for itself an onward -through
peesege
every obstacle in its way, The Registrar-General
tells us that we may take the last quarter of a cen-
tury, and consider that the growth of our population
throughout the whole period proceeded as unintct-.
ruptedly and as uniformly
gigantic pine. " Each quinquennial • period rid&
a million urn limo ,d
snore to the account. In 1836 40
the population was rising through t 1 its mixteerit' million; in 1841-15 throiigh its seventeenth; in'
1846-50 through its eighteenth; in 1851-55 throw;}
itsnineteenth; and in 1856-60 through its twentietilt million."
In the middle of 1861 our numbers
arcomputed to have been 20,119,496 for England anti
Wales only, and this in spite of wars, mutinies,
commercial Panics, deficient harvests, and incleme
seasons. Calamities which startle us at the rit
moment,
toad Which rattY produce deep Joni clwa" f ves, fttil to