Page:PettyWilliam1899EconomicWritingsVol2.djvu/87

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394
Graunt's Observations.

more unhealthful: and inclined to believe, that London now is more unhealthful than heretofore; partly for that |95| it is more populous, but chiefly because I have heard, that sixty years ago few Sea-Coals were burnt in London, which are now universally used. For I have heard, that Newcastle is more unhealthful than other places and that many People cannot at all endure the smoak of London, not only for its unpleasantness, but for the suffocations which it causes[1].

14. Suppose, that Anno 1569 there were 2400 Souls in that Parish, and that they increased by the Births 70, exceeding the Burials 58, it will follow, that the said 2400 cannot double under 200. Now, if London be less healthful than the Country, as certainly it is, the Plague being reckoned in, it follows, that London must be doubling it self by generation in much above 200[2]: but if it hath increased from 2 to 5 in 54, as aforesaid, the same must be by reason of transplantation out of the Country. |96|


The Conclusion.

IT may be now asked, To what purpose tends all this laborious bustling and groping? To know,

1. The number of the People?

2. How many Males and Females?

3. How many Married and Single?

4. How many Teeming Women?

5. How many of every Septenary, or Decad of years in age?

6. How many Fighting Men?

7. How much London is, and by what steps it hath, increased?

  1. Evelyn's Fumifugium, with its plan for banishing "that hellish and dismal Cloud of Sea-Coale," was published in the previous year, 1661. See Petty's Treatise of Taxes, p. 41, note.
  2. This agrees but ill with Graunt's calculation that "in eight times eight years the whole People of the City shall double, without the access of Forreiners," p. 388.