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every house to inquire about the attendance or non-attendance of the children at school, and may make additional inquiries at the same time? These officers, as a rule, are stated to be highly intelligent men. The appointment of the most eligible officers, however, may be left to the Local Registrar and the Clerk of the Union. The officers will have the dates of birth of every living person in a house, and, without troubling the occupier, he may insert of himself the addition of the year, and get answers to his inquiries into other particulars deemed necessary. There is one point I ascertained with respect to the Metropolis, and that is the very large changes in the population by constant removals, even in the most prosperous periods. The electoral agent of the City of London, the late Mr. Sidney Smith, stated that the changes of occupiers of houses on the registration list as voters were at least twenty per cent, per annum. Mr. Kelly stated that the changes for his great Directory for the whole of the Metropolis were fully twenty per cent. For his Suburban registration he only enters occupiers of houses rented at £50 and above, and among these the changes by removals were about the same. But the changes of residence among the wage classes, to follow and be near their work, appeared to be greater than of any other classes, and amount to as much as one-third. These changes as respects children are extremely perplexing to the school teachers. What must they not yet be in their operation on a quinquennial census?
Now the report of the stock-taking for a local administration would be such as to serve for its guidance, and may, I believe be made of great annual interest to the ratepayers. It may serve to direct the efforts of the local authority to the gain in economy from works of sanitation; it would present to them, and to the localities, an interest in the incomings and the outgoings of different classes in their occupations, the proportion of the sick and paupers and dependents leading to the consideration of their causes. I submit the following sketch of a stock-taking of a population, such as was appended to my Report on "The Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population", in 1842.
