of this registration of marriages is soon told.
This plan of recording the matrimonial
engagements of the country commenced in 1745,
when the marriage act came into operation.
Before that date marriages were performed
clandestinely, and by such extraordinary
persons that any correct record of their
number was impossible. " Fleet marriages " are
thus noticed by Smollett:—" There was a
band of profligate miscreants, the refuse of
the clergy, dead to every sentiment of virtue,
abandoned to all sense of decency and decorum,
for the most part prisoners for debt or
delinquency, and indeed the very outcasts of
human society, who hovered about the verge
of the Fleet Prison to intercept customers,
plying like porters for employment, and
performed the ceremony of marriage without
license or question, in cellars, garrets, or ale-
houses, to the scandal of religion, and the
disgrace of that order which they professed.
The ease with which this ecclesiastical sanction
was obtained, and the vicious disposition
of those wretches open to the practices of
fraud and corruption, were productive of
polygamy, indigence, conjugal infidelity,
prostitution, and every curse that could
embitter the married state. A remarkable case
of this nature having fallen under the
cognizance of the Peers (in 1753) in an appeal
from an inferior tribunal, that House ordered
the judges to prepare a new Bill for
preventing such abuses; and one was accordingly
framed, under the auspices of Lord
Hardwick, at that tune Lord High Chancellor of
England."

"It underwent a great number of alterations
and amendments, which were not effected
without violent contest and altercation; at
length, however, it was floated through both
houses on the tide of a great majority, and
steered into the safe harbour of royal
approbation."

For seventy-seven years after the passing
of this bill the number of marriages was
collected with tolerable accuracy, and
published in the Parish Register Abstracts. No
other country has so valuable an abstract of
tables. Since that time the Registrar-General's
office has made this branch of our
national statistics almost accurate.

Premising that the documents from which
our statements are derived are the Annual
Reports of the Registrar-General, of Births,
Deaths, and Marriages, in England, issued—
not for a short term, but during the last six
years—that the observations extend over a
still longer period—we may proceed to cull
out what appear to be the economical laws
regulating matrimony, with any peculiarities
characterising their operation amongst us.
We would say the general laws—for individual
peculiarities will, of course, influence
individual matches. One young lady will secure
the youth of her choice by force of beauty, or
by mere weight of purse; managing mothers
will get husbands for their girls, whatever
wind may blow, or however trade or politics
may influence the less fortunate or less clever
world. The great beauty, the great talents,
and the great wealth are the exceptions in
the lottery of life. In speaking of
matrimonial prospects we, like the Registrar-
General, mean the prospects of the great
family of twenty millions of souls that make
up the population of this land we live in.

About a century ago, the marriages in
London were under six thousand a-year—
they are now four times as many. In all the
country, the increase has been most remarkable
in the Metropolis and in Manchester. In
particular localities the proportion is found to
differ. Thus Yorkshire, the seat of the Woollen
manufactures and of prosperous agriculturists,
appears to be the most marrying district of
all England; Lancashire and Cheshire, the
Cotton districts, coming next; and London
third. Staffordshire and Worcestershire,
Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire stand
next, followed by other counties more or
less blessed by the presence of Hymen, but
descending gradually till we reach the
matrimonial zero which is found in the agricultural
parts of Middlesex. The average annual
number of weddings is about one hundred
and twenty-three thousand. It would help a
winter night's amusement to decide how many
pounds weight of Californian produce must
be wanted for the rings? How many
garlands of orange blossoms for the hair and
bonnets of the brides? The probabilities of
marriage, of course, vary; but the rule seems
to hold, that about one in seventeen unmarried
women, between the ages of fifteen and forty-
five, are married in a year throughout the
country. Marriages have their seasons. They
are least numerous in winter, and most
numerous after harvest in the December
quarter; the births and deaths, on the
contrary, are most numerous in the winter quarter
ending in March, and least numerous in the
summer quarter ending September. War
diminishes marriages by taking great numbers
of marriageable men away from their homes;
whilst a return of peace increases marriages,
when soldiers and sailors with small pensions
are discharged. Trade and manufactures
have also become more active in England on
the cessation of wars, and the employment
and wages thus induced, have contributed still
more to add to the numbers of those entering
the married state. The establishment of new,
or the extension of old, employments promotes
marriages: the cotton manufactures, the canals
of the last century, the railways of the present
day, are examples. Indeed, an increase of
their incomes, is taken by the generality of
the people for the beginning of perennial
prosperity, and is followed by a multitude of
marriages. There are only about fifteen
persons married annually, for the first time, out
of a thousand living. There are about five
children born in wedlock to every marriage.
The births now exceed the deaths in England,