278

HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

criAp. Even intelligent Londoners ordinarily talked of London as-containing several millions of souls. It was confidently as-serted by many that, during the thirty-five years which hadelapsed between the accession of Charles the First and theRestoration, the population of the city had increased by twomillions.* Even while the ravages of the plague and firewere recent, it was the fashion to say that the capital still hada million and a half of inhabitants.** Some persons, disgustedby these exaggerations, ran violently into the opposite ex-treme. Thus Isaac Vossius, a man of undoubted parts andlearning, strenuously maintained that there were only twomillions of human beings in England, Scotland, and Irelandtaken together. ***

We are not, however, left without the means of correctingthe wild blunders into which some minds were hurried bynational vanity and others by a morbid love of paradox.There are extant three computations which seem to beentitled to peculiar attention. They are entirely independentof each other: they proceed on different principles; and yetthere is little difference in the results.

One of these computations was made in the year 1696 byGregory King, Lancaster herald, a political arithmeticianof great acuteness and judgment. The basis of his calcula-tions was the number of houses returned in 1690 by the of-ficers who made the last collection of the hearth money.The conclusion at which he arrived was that the populationof England was nearly five millions and a half, j-

* Observations on the Bills of Mortality, liy. Captain John Graunt(Sir William Petty), chap. xi.

** “She doth comprehend

Full fifteen hundred thousand which do spend

Their days within.” Great Britain's Beauty, 1611.

*** Isaac Vossius, De Magnitudine Urbium Sinarum, 1685. Vossius,as we learn from St. Evremond, talked on this subject oftener and longerthan fashionable circles cared to listen.

+ King’s Natural and Political Observations, 1696. This valuabletreatise, which ought to be read as the aulhorwrole it, and not as garbledby Davenant, will be found in some ediLions of Chalmers’s Estimate.