MATRIMONY AND TRADE DEPRESSION.

Evening Post, Volume XXII, Issue 55, 3 September 1881, Page 4

MATRIMONY AND TRADE DEPRESSION.

The annual report of the Registrar-General for England and Wales is not usually looked upon as an entertaining document. Nevertheless, to anyone who mil transmute the figures into facta, the tabular statements of Sir Brydges Henniker aro singularly rich in materials from whioh to deduce safe conclusions regarding our moral and material prosperity. To look no further afield than the marriage returns for the year 1879, we find in the report just issued some iuterestiug particulars, that are worth bringing to light. A high marriage rate is— with, perhaps, the exception of Ireland — rightly considered a proof of the prosperity of the nation. Individuals may be thoughtless, but the community, as a whole, is provident, and does not rashly accept the responsibility of providing for many when there are but Blender prospects of supporting more than one in comfort. According to this test, the year 1879 must have been one of extraordinary depression ; for the marriage rate of that year was the lowest on reaord since civil registration began. Inthe" flush" year of 1873, 17"6 per thousand of the people entered into wedlock; from that date the rate declined uninterruptedly until, in 1579, it stood no higher than 14*5 per thousand. In other words, 233,544 people found it necessary to remain single, who, had the rate remained during these six years at the same level as 1873, would have married. This decrease was not confined to any one district, or class of districts, but prevailed in almost every part of the kingdom, and may bo said to have applied equally to nearly every country on the Continent iv which trade was dull. In England and Wales the mining distriots seem to have most felt the necessity of checking their natural propensity to wedlock, while the agricultural and metropolitan parts of the kingdom felt it the least of all.