CURIOSITIES OF OUR CENSUS.

Colonist, Volume IX, Issue 909, 12 June 1866, Page 3

CURIOSITIES OF OUR CENSUS.

ftEBE are many who deem Parliamentary « Books and their facts, figures, and 'tatistics the' driest of all reading, and toddy exclaim against their contents being tofed up, g 0 common is this idea, so freJiently has it been repeated, t.hat the fallacy 123 come to be accepted as a popular truism, Wmention of Blue Books generally pro*s contemptuous epithets, and, where Pole, a shutting of one's ears and eyes. «nothing can be more fallacious than 5 a frequently expressed antipathy to this Want Parliamentary and really national gature. The Blue Books of every civil--5 nation (they are Yellow Books in jJW contain the history of the country. ■*%.its,learning, habits, its com7*i its social condition, and much of its . "fe can be gathered from these oft-spoken M seldom read repositories of facts" which I ? forth the national life. A little Jyg (well, we shall say not a little (J^gi and in that, in the necessity for tat A an^ *n^Ußtri°us examination and retliMtV^ rea(ty comparison, with not less ifßl ?]"ng r no doubt lie the unpopularity ajfto Books)—something of that careful 2 nli then ' alwa7B reP ayß itself- They J. Ke onakespeare or the Bible ;—a belie- %» and fr. equenter of Blue Books rarely , one -without discovering a new "reads' or seeing facts which help to explain events.' 4! pUrpose touching on the contents of to. i? two of the three or four hundred vLH make up the volume of New ehSr statistics for the year 1864, which H *v J e Census Eeturns for the Colony, GoJL h haß onl7 Juafc w«ued from the MhSr 90* P»nting Office, having been Sd 11 c,,onße(luence of the necessity of }Wf; re ™**nee to enumerators for exf^tions of these returns. •^ ainongtne most interesting returns, as *>W I? x? the Bocial condition of the •Win* Ju eal? ndi we Bele«t the table H^g the distribution of occupations we population of European descent

in New Zealand in December, 1864. Our total population: (exciuatve of military and their wives) was 172,158; of whom 106,580 were males, and 65,578 females; the " lords" of the creation being thus in a minority as compared with the "ladies" thereof, in the proportion of 10 males to 6i of the other sex. By this total population of 172,000, our colonial wants and works are attended to in the various industries and professions engaged in the colony, as follows: Our trade, commerce, and manufactures engage 7625 persons ; our agricultural and pastoral pursuits give employment to 12,089 individuals; skilled workers, mechanics and artificers in general, number 12,118. Of gold-diggers we had 12,527 in December, 1864, and since then there have been large accessions to that class of workers ; but we are dealing with our population status of eighteen months ago. So much for our gold finding, sheep-tending, farming, and trading and commercial armies. The cure of our souls and future welfare are attended to by 235 members of the clerical profession. For the cure of our bodies we have the watchful care and the ready lancet, the blue pill and black draught of 231 doctors, surgeons, and other medical practitioners. Physic and Divinity are thus closely on a par in point of number, so that for one learned gentleman whose medical .knowledge helps to keep us in, or aids us in going out of the world, we have another who stands by the bedside and whispers ghostly comfort to soothe our departure, and aid our advent into the world of spirits beyond. 153 members of the legal profession make our wills, transfer our properties, and, for payment of fees, sue and defend us in the courts of the colony. In this number apparently are included Judges, Resident Magistrates, Registrars, and others closely connected with the legal profession. In the Chatham Islands, with a population of 86 European souls, there are two clergymen and one doctor; but—happy commumunity!—no lawyer; nor, we are bound to add, is there a single teacher, aurveyor, or member of other educated professions. There are 612 teachers in the colony, 290 surveyors, and 204 belonging to other educated professions. Of laborers there are 12,639, besides 6202 domestic and general servants; and 10,492 who come under the head miscellaneous. We have 3459 seamen to man our mercantile marine; and the list winds up with 93,282 persons, of whom " no occupation instated," but who, the registrar obliging explains, (and a very necessary explanation it is,) consist chiefly of women and children,and this last entry it will be observed comprises more than half the population of the colony at the date of the census.

We have some further insight into the employment of females by a note appended to the table. By that we learn that Trade, Commerce, and Manufacture, give employment to 222 females; 230 are engaged in agricultural and pastoral work ; 802 are described as mechanics, artificers, and skilled workers; 322 are teachers, which shows that there are more female than male teachers in the colony, as the table itself gives the total of that profession at 612; 806 are miscellaneously employed ; 4037 are described as domestic servants, and 12,126 more are stated as engaged in domestic duties, but this last is believed to be incomplete, as in the returns from some of the provinces no entry is made under this heading. Some remarkable facts are shown by the table which states the religious denominations which exist in the population. By this it appears that the Protestants of all sects number abont 147,000 to 148,000 persons. The following figures show the strength of the principal bodies:—

Males. Females. Total. Church of England... 45,275 27,843 73,118 Presbyterians 25,768 16,290 42,058 Eoman Catholics 14,001 7,506 21,507 Wesleyan Methodists 6,837 5,669 12,506 Independents 2,042 1,647 3,689 Baptists 1,825 1,566 3,391 Primitive Methodists 730 610 1,340 Lutheran Church 1,413 390 1,803 Hebrews 621 334 955 Society of Friends ... 93 35 128 Protestants not specified 4,657 2,168 7,825 Otherwise described... 1,422 798 2,220 Not described 1,896 722 2,618

Qf the Presbyterians in New Zealand the Census schedules show that 6717 belonged to the Church of Scotland, 4905 to the Free Church of Scotland; and 30,436 are stated as " Presbyterians " not distinctly specified, and believed to include both these denominations.

An explanatory note, haying reference to the class " otherwise described," is repletewith material for proving the power of dissent, and of freedom-of thought and conscience. There are no fewer than 87 different secta represented in those 3220 " otherwise described" persons. "We compile the following table :— Males. Females. Total. Christians ... 193 155 348 Christian Disciples, Followers of Christ, Bible Christians, &c. 122 122 244 Unitarians ... 201 95 296 "NoKeligion" ... 170 44 214 Dissenters and Noncomformists 95 76 171 No Denomination ... ... 98 56 154 Non-Sectarians ... 32 33 65 Plymouth Brethren 35 28 63 Evangelical Union ... 37 20 %57 Calvinists .48 7 55 Christian Israelites ... 33 14 47 Mormons (Latter-day Saints) 42 4 46 Freethinkers ... 31 13 44 Greek Church ...... ... 34 V — 34 Moravians ... 14 17 31 Swedenborgians ... 17 13 30 Universalists 23 6 ' 29 New Church '.. 11 9 20 Other descriptions 186 86 272 The most remarkable feature in the foregoing table is that the last entry " Other Descriptions," numbering 272 persons, comprehends no fewer than 70 different descriptions of religionists or sects; thus "making altogether one hundred and one distinct sects, allowing for four shades of Presbyterians, and excluding the "No Beligionists." It is a fact, which experience proves, that women are more religious in their nature than men, and hence in Eoman Catholic 'countries that system of religion exerts far more influence over and through the female mind than over that of the sterner sex. We might instance as an example Prance, where from the Empresß downward this is notoriously the case; the men being to a large extent free-thinkers ; having more or less lost their faith ever since the Bevolution of 1798, when Eoman Catholicism waß abolished by the revolutionists and a nude woman of loose character, was enthroned and honored as representing the goddess of reason. It is difficult tojsay

to-what class the-M females belong who are set d'.>wn.ajs:;o£.!'no. religion;'* biit.itis,.not libelling, the sex to say.tihat they "belong to one of two classes approaching the extremes of social life. Either they are akin to the sisterhood of the goddess of reason representative, or they belong to an educated, thinking class, who have thought for themselves, and, however erroneously, have resolved their doubts by the principle of negation, and adopted as their creed the heart-spoken dogma of the fool—" There is no God." It is melancholy to think of women so openly professing such opinions as to have themselves set down in a public document as owning no faith and accepting no creed.

The Mormons, those saintly sensualists of these latter degenerate days, display a condition in their numerical status in New Zealand which would speedily destroy the social organisation of the city of the Salt Lake. Instead of Brigham Young and his Elders and followers, having "sealed" to them scores of wives without limit, the process would require to be reversed, for the female converts to the faith as it was in Joseph Smith are few in New' Zealand, being only 4 women to 42 males. Instead, therefore, as in Mormon land, where seven or seventy women " shall lay hold of one man," ten or eleven, men would require to sue at the feet of one woman! In a country where women are greatly in the minority, and where they are so well paid as in New Zealand, there is not much probability that many females will be induced to undertake the pilgrimage to Utah, the City of the Saints, where women are held cheaply, and where true domesticity cannot exist. If a couple of pages in this Blue Book furnish matter for thought such as we have shown from their many figured columns, said we not rightly at the outset of this article that in Blue Books are to be found the history and social life of a nation ?