The Sun.
London, England, 1853-06-06 00:00:00

RESULTS OF THE CENSUS OF 1851

(From tile Times.)
Two huge volumes have just been issued which
will undoubtedly be the most interesting and re-
markable Parliamentary publications of the season.
They contain the results of the Census of 1851.
There is, probably, no science so imperfectly com-
prehended as that of statistics, nor could anything
be better calculated to improve the popular appre-
ciation of this subject than the books before us.
We have no doubt that many of our readers have
been in the habit of considering a national census
as a work of some labour, but no great skill, and
as serving the purposes rather: of natural curiosity
than public advantage. They could, of course,
understand that to count the heads of the British
population must require a certain amount of
trouble ; but they imagined, perhaps, that the task
could be readily accomplished by a judicious subdi-
vision of labour, and that when certain operations
of simple addition had been performed the result
was completed. An act of Parliament ordered a
reckoning to be made of the inhabitants of Great
Britain. The computation took place accordingly,
and the numbers were returned at 21,121,967, of
whom 10,386,078 were males, and 10,735,919
females. What more was to be done ? The reply
to this question will be gathered, we hope, as we
proceed.

The first object was to construct 4, machinery
for effecting this simple- enumeration—a work so
far from easy that the bare description of the
method employed occupies six folio pages of the
report. It was necessary to obtain from those whO
alone cold furnish it—viz., heals of families or
institutions—an authentic account of the numbers
under their respective roofs. For this purpose the
whole country was divided by imaginary lines into
" registration districts," the registration districts
into sub-districts, and the sub-districts into enume-
ration districts. The two former divisions already
existed under the system of civil registration, but
the latter was created for the purpose of the census.
Of the enumeration districts there were 30,610,
each being assigned to one enumerator, who was to
completo his enumeration in one day. Of the me-
thod adopted we need say little, as every house-
holder will remember his own share in the trans-
action ; but there were some supplementary returns
to be procured, which required no little adjustment
of expedients and resources. Each householder of
the district accounted to the enumerator for the
inmates of his house ; but there were some persons
who were inmates of no houses at all. For instance
—miners, travellers, and policemen had to be com-
puted by a distinct machinery ; and besides these
classes, there were the persons who might be sleep-
ing on boats or barges, in barns, in tents, or in the
open air. All these had to be estimated according
to the most promising plan ; and the reader may
be interested, perhaps, in learning that on the par-
ticular night of the census 12,924 people are be-
lieved to have been sleeping in barges, 9,972 in
barns, and 8,277 in the open air or under tents.
It is rather curious that in 1841 the number of the
houseless class was larger—viz., 22,303 ; but this
is explained by the fact that the census was then
taken at a season (June 7) when many Irish and
other labourers were engaged in the hay harvest.
Had the reckoning fallen upon the present summer,
this class of the returns might have been increased
by the whole garrison of Chobham Camp. It is
a curious evidence of Gipsy feeling that in one in-
stance a whole tribe struck their tents and decamped
to escape the enumerator.
But the returns of a census acquire their chief
utility from being contrasted with those of former
periods. When we have ascertained that the popu-
lation of Great Britain in 1851 was 21,128,967, the
next point is to discover what relation these num-
bers bear to the previous epochs. From this com-
parison, carried out in all its branches, we learn
the increase or decrease of the population, the an-
nual rate of such variations, and the proportionate
relations of the two sexes to each other. From
these results, again, we can approximate to some-
thing like a " law of population," that is to say, to
certain natural rules, the infraction of which must
be due to particular, and perhaps removable, dis-
turbing causes. All these calculations are elabo-
rately made in the volume before us. As we can
do little more on the present occasion than indicate
the various deductions furnished by the report, we
content ourselves with observing that the whole
population has doubled since 180 Lr and that,
though the general rate ,of increase has varied,
owing to the action of epidemics and emigration,
the sexes have preserved their proportions—viz.,
about 30 males and 31 females. The facts may be
conveyed perhaps more forcibly, if we state that in
half a century, notwithstanding the operation of
all opposing causes, ten millions of people have
been added to the population of Great Britain, an
increase nearly equalling the increase in all pre-
ceding ages. . .

The statistics of a census, however, do not stop
short at mere numbers. In furtherance of the
higher ends of political and social economy it is
necessary .to discriminate and classify the in-
habitants of a state ; and how is this to be done ?
Some idea may be formed of the latent difficulties
of the task when we say that much debate seems
to have occurred on the proper definition of a
" family," a " house," or a " town." According
to the precedents of former censuses, even a single
lodger not boarding in the house of which he was
the inmate constituted a " family;" but on the pre-
sent occasion the difficulty has been partly evaded
by substituting the word "occupier" in place of
the " family" of former returns. As to the word
" house," so enigmatical and debateable is the term
considered, that the authority of Dr. Carus, the
Saxon physician, is invoked in aid of the report,
and that of Tacitus in aid of Dr. Carus. The
question is, whether a mansion or tenement inha-
bited by many individuals or families on different
floors, as in Scotland, or in different chambers, as
in our Inns of Court, constitutes one house or
many. On former occasions the decision of this
point was actually considered impossible, but at
present it seems to have been ruled that houses are
" isolated dwellings, or dwellings separated by
party walls"—a definition which would bring Han-
well Lunatic Asylum in the same category with the
lodge of a turnpike gate. In Great Britain the
number of families has risen from 2,260,802, in
1801, to 4,312,388 in 1851. The last half-century
has seen 1,815,567
" new lines of families" esta-
blished in England, while in Scotland the number
has increased from 364,079 to 600,098, notwith-
standing the migratory propensities imputed to its
inhabitants. Britain Thewas number of
a‘t‘ "inhabited houses"
against
in
Great
3,446,797 in the last census, and 1,870,476 in 1801.
Omitting decimals, we might state that there was 1
family to a house, 5 persons to a house, and 4 par-
s ons to a family—figures which are made to square
with those before given the fractions 1.182, 5.706,
4.4825.
Next comes the question of " towns"—a term
which is made to include all aggregations of dwell-
ings above the small groups called " villages" or
" hamlets." Of these, that is to say, of " places
having defined boundaries and separately returned
in population tables, there are 17,150, while of ge
flume towns there are in England and Wales, 580,
in Scotland 225, and in the Channel Islands 10.
Besides these points there are those of relative po-
pulation, of relative territorial area, and of the
Proximity of the towns to each other—all which are
carefully discussed. ‘, Conceive•
," says the report,
" an area of 58,320 square mi▪ les divided into 583
squares, each containing 25 square figures of four
square miles ; a market town in the central square
containing 15,510 inhabitants, and the 24 similar
squares arranged symmetrically around it in villages
containing churches and chapels and houses, hold-
ing in the aggregate 16,000 inhabitants. Now,
imagine the figures to be of. every variety of form
as well as size, and a clear idea is obtained of the
way that the ground of the island has been taken
up and is occupied by the population." Something
is observed respecting the " adventious character"
of certain towns--i- e-, a character created and
sustained by special circumstances for special pur-
poses ; but we do not see any mention of new towns.
To be sure towns do not multiply like families, but
we imagined that two or three had
.been called into
existence by the operation of the railway system.
From towns we ascend to the " territorial
subdivisions of the kingdom, and the report
actually recapitulates the ancient distributions of
, Britain from the earliest times, including the
divisions made by the Romans and Saxons suc-
cessively, the state of things under the Heptarchy,
and the arrangement by shi▪
res, hundreds, and
tithings, which we owe to Alfred the Great. At
tin fact, we appear to be perusing some
antiquarian treatise, and the text is supported
btdlyeliesliilb)oiit' eratlreferences to the best known authorities,
ranging from Ccesar's Commentaries to the essays of
living scholars. One circumstance may, perhaps,
amuse the reader. " The British population"—
that is to say, we Englishmen, Welchmen, and
Scotchmen— are described as being distributed
" over a great multitude of islands rising between
1 the Atlantic and the North Sea," of which Great
Britain is the largest, Probably no one ever under-