up his schedule. Then, this is the enumerator
who made up a book as relator of the contents
of the schedule that the householder filled up.
Next, this is the registrar who took the book
to look and see whether the enumerator had
been a true relator of the contents of the
schedules that the householder filled up. After
which, this is the superintendent-registrar who
revised the book which the registrar took for a
good overlook to see whether the enumerator
had been a true relator of the contents of the
schedules that the householder filled up. There
we are at present. Yet to come, is the crown of
the work: This is the census-office ordained by
the act, for making a statement detailed and
exact, which collated minutely with critical eyes
what the superintendent-registrars had to revise
after the good overlook of the registrar who
took the book to see whether the enumerator
had been a true relator of the contents of the
schedule that the householder filled up.

The minute and exact report of the census-
office we must wait some time for. The reports
of the superintendent-registrars yield in the
mean time rough general results worth publishing;
so they are published in a fourpenny
parliamentary paper, and are open to what comment
the public likes to make upon what conclusions
it may please to figure to itself.

In the first place, we know how many there
are of us in England and Wales. Including
more than a hundred and sixty thousand men of
the army, navy, and merchant service, who are
not at home, our number is about twenty million
and a quarter. We have increased in number
by nearly two million and a quarter during the
last ten years, which is a rate lower than in any
ten years' interval since the beginning of the
century. As we have become more numerous the
rate of increase has decreased, and it is a curious
fact that the decrease for the last half-century has
been a regular decrease of one per cent in every
census period. In eighteen hundred and eleven
the increase of population shown by the census
was of sixteen per cent, at the next census it was
fifteen, then fourteen, then thirteen, and now it
is twelve. This is partly the result of increasing
emigration. An emigration table is the last in
this return, which chiefly relates to the period
of the present census, and as far as it goes
shows a recent decline in the tendency of
Englishmen to emigrate, which has been very
marked indeed during the last three years.
Where twenty-six of us emigrated last year
ninety had emigrated in 'fifty-four—the year,
for the whole three kingdoms, of greatest
emigration within the last census period—and almost
eighty in 'fifty-seven, which was the last year of
free migration out of England. The number
fell to one-half in the year following, and has
since declined. There was at the same date an
equal fall in emigration out of Ireland, but that
has since been rising again rather rapidly. On
comparing one census time with another, it is
inferred that the emigration during the period
now under calculation—two million and a quarter
from the whole United Kingdom—was three
times greater than it had been in the years
between 'thirty-one and 'forty-one, and in a much
less degree—but still over half a million—in
excess of the ten yearly periods from 'forty-one to
'fifty-one.

Now let us try to get some more facts about
ourselves out of these figures. The population
of the country, owing to the decline in
rate of increase, does not, it seems, double
quite so fast as was expected from a
comparison of earlier censuses. We have not
quite doubled in half a century. As to the
great number, we were—in England and Wales
—ten million in the eleventh, and are twenty
million in the sixty-first year of the century,
but when we include in calculation the odd
thousands, it appears that it will take us full
three years more to double perfectly the
number by which the population of England and
Wales was represented fifty years ago; that is
to say, we have doubled our numbers in fifty-
three years. It will, as the rate of increase goes,
be at least sixty years before we double it
again.

Then as to the proportion between inhabited
houses and inhabitants of the land, a question
apparently dependent upon conditions of crowding,
the number of the homeless, or of persons
gathered into asylums. There is an occupied
house now to every five persons and (we must
needs cruelly chop up some individuals) four-
tenths of a person. In the census before, a house
to every five and five-tenths; in the one before
that again, a house to about every five and four-
tenths; in the one before that, the crowding was
a little closer, but still there were only five and
a little more than six-tenths to a house; in the
one before that, closer still—but not yet six to a
house—only five and a little more than eight-
tenths; and so it had then been for thirty years.
We do not, then, get any striking result from a
comparison between the whole number of the
people and the whole number of their habitations.
There has been an average of between
five and six persons to a house for the last sixty
years; but we are less crowded by two-fifths of
a man to a house than we were forty, fifty, or
sixty years since.

We try, according to these census figures, the
relation between houses and inhabitants in
London registration districts. In St. Martin's-
in-the-Fields, St. Giles's, Holborn, and the
Strand, in East London, in the City, and in St.
James's, Westminster, there are fewer inhabited
houses than there were ten years ago. London
improvements have cleared them away. In the
Hampstead district, which is the least populous,
the proportionate increase of house-building has
been greatest. To seventeen hundred houses,
more than nine hundred have been added, and to
a population of not twelve thousand, more than
seven thousand have been added. Three other
districts, namely, Lewisham, and the far more
populous Kensington (which includes Paddington),
and, lastly, Islington, have increased very
nearly at the same rate, being, as to the number
of houses in them, more than half as large