183. This assertion, however formidable it may seem, is
founded on the original registers of births, deaths, and
marriages, collected by public authority, and now deposited
in the Controle General at Paris. The annual average of
births throughout the whole kingdom, taken in five years
(from 1770 to 1774, both inclusive), is 479,649 boys and
449,269 girls, in all 928,918 children. The province of
French Hainault alone furnishes 9906 births; and we are
assured, by an actual enumeration of the people, annually
repeated from the year 1773 to the year 1776, that, upon an
average, Hainault contains 257,097 inhabitants. By the rules
of fair analogy, we might infer that the ordinary proportion
of annual births to the whole people is about 1 to 26; and
that the kingdom of France contains 24,151,868 persons of
both sexes and of every age. 1f we content ourselves with
the more moderate proportion of 1 to 25, the whole
population will amount to 23,222,950. From the diligent
researches of the French government (which are not unworthy
of our own imitation) we may hope to obtain a still greater
degree of certainty on this important subject.