live in unity and harmony with one another, not to fall out in time of misfortune, nor to be presumptuous in time of prosperity, but to despise death in time of war, and pursue trade and agriculture in time of peace, being aware of the existence of a Providence, watching over all and everywhere. Now, if others have either written these laws before or kept them better, then we, as their disciples, are greatly indebted to them; but if it is seen that we keep these laws most, and if I have proved that these laws were found first with us, then Apion and all his followers, who find pleasure in telling stories of us and insulting us, have been convicted and condemned." Josephus had shown that in the Mosaic law, God is the centre of life, and that Moses had proved that by his own life and actions. He then proceeds to the single laws, demonstrating the just and gentle spirit which prevails that legislation. But he does not stop at the legislation of the Pentateuch, but describes the Judaism of his own time. "The tenacity and perseverance," he says, "with which the Jews have adhered to this law at all times, testifies to its divine origin." Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that Josephus, in his Apology, made some concessions to the Greeks in many a dogmatical view. So, for instance, he does not represent Revelation as a supernatural thing, but declares it to be an outcome of a great enthusiasm. But taking him all in all, every impartial observer must own that he was a man of great learning, a man who deserves the admiration and gratitude of posterity, and a man who has won the laurels of praise and the palm of immortality. His siding with the Romans was by no means a cowardly act, but merely the outcome of an ardent desire to save his numberless coreligionists, who otherwise would have been the victims of cruelty and perdition, thus proving himself to be a lover of his faith and race.

H

THE CENSUS OF 1881.

By EWING WHITTLE, M.D., M.R.I.A.

TEN years ago I read a paper on the Census of 1871, which the Council were kind enough to publish; on this occasion I wish merely to refer briefly to that article, before proceeding to the remarks which I propose to make on the recent Census.

I then showed that when the Irish people ceased to derive their sustenance solely from the potatoe, their previously rapid increase was so materially checked, that emigration was found a means not only sufficient to check their very rapid increase, but even to very largely reduce the actual numbers of the people; there was in ten years a decrease of very nearly 400,000. I showed, from the returns of the relative numbers of married and unmarried women, that the commonly received opinion that the poverty of Ireland was due to improvident marriages was a fallacy; I showed that the condition of Ireland was then steadily advancing; that the agricultural labourers were better fed than in most of the agricultural counties in England; that when land was sold in small quantities, peasant farmers came forward as purchasers, in some instances giving as much as 34 years' purchase; again, that the number of inmates in the workhouses had fallen from over five to less than one per cent. of the population. I contrasted with Ireland the rapid increase of the population in England, and their aggregation in large cities; and I drew this conclusion from my study of the Census, that with regard to England, the rapid increase of her population, and their massing together in large centres, are circumstances that demand the anxious consideration of the economist, more particularly as affecting the important question of the relations of capital and labour."

The recent Census confirms what the two previous ones had already foreshadowed; viz.-that, with regard to the growth of population, the conditions of England and Ireland were being completely reversed; that while in Ireland the population, instead of increasing rapidly, is absolutely declining from year to year; that, on the contrary, England, instead of showing a slow increase, has begun to advance by rapid bounds, the increase in this decade being 3,256,020, bringing up the population of England and Wales to very nearly twenty-six millions, an addition to the population of more than 5,900,000 in twenty years; the rate of increase being now 14.34 per cent. The returns seem to show that the increase is mostly in the large manufacturing districts. In seven counties, ranging from Surrey to Derbyshire, the increase varies from 31 to 21 per cent. The vast increase in Surrey is clearly due to its being contiguous to London. In other counties, twenty in number, the range is from 19 to 7; in the remaining twenty-five counties, there is either a small increase, or, as is the case in fourteen, an absolute decrease. Of these it may be said that, practically, the population is stationary, ranging from +3 in Denbighshire to -3 in Brecknock; these are all agricultural counties. Taking the urban as contrasted with the rural districts, we find the population increasing in a much faster ratio

The increase being 2,571,710; that is nearly five-sixths of the increase in the whole kingdom, leaving little more than onefifth of the amount as the increase throughout all the rural population; that being about half the urban, according to this table

We cannot conclude that the great increase in the town population is solely due to the people being attracted to the towns by the prospect of more profitable employment. That the towns do drain away to some extent the natural increase in the rest of the country, is a self-evident proposition, but it will not account for the vast increase of 19 per cent. in ten years. Where, then, are we to seek for the source of this everswelling mass of rapidly-growing population. The following extract from an article on the School Board, in the Daily News of Nov. 11th, will throw some light upon the question; the writer is accompanying a School Board visitor in search. of truants, and says:

"We steal up a narrow and broken staircase and rap at a filthy door, and then peep in; my friend has, I observe, a preference for the outside of a door; he has his own personal reasons for keeping aloof; once he has carried the smallpox to all his family, once he has been thrown neck and crop down stairs, once he has been met with the long glittering blade with which a ruffian had been slicing up wooden pipelights, and once he had a narrow escape of being thrown upon the fire of a lodging-house kitchen, by a score of sturdy rogues assembled there. We peep in at a half-opened door, and a more dismal sight I have rarely met with. A woman, with a face pale and thin, and telling of a deal of suffering, and hopelessly afflicted with heart disease, sits on some filthy bedding on a ruinous wooden bedstead, which, with a bit of a table and a broken chair or two, constitutes the whole furniture of the room. There are six children, one in arms, the rest about 2, 5, 7, 9, and 11 respectively; the father had been thirteen weeks out of work, and three weeks ago they were turned out of their home, and all their belongings seized for rent. The forlorn little party have crept in here into furnished lodgings, and for that one hideous little black and filthy den, they are pledged to pay four and sixpence a week rent. This is in the neighbourhood of the Mint, Southwark, where extensive clearances were made some two years ago, and where those of us who have known its neighbourhood have been persuading ourselves that a great improvement had taken place; certainly the spot is more open, and possibly a good many unpleasant people have been driven elsewhere, but it is positively distressing to hear of the extortions to which these poor people are exposed. I went down into dark, fetid underground kitchens, for which the tenants were paying four