xxiv On these principles, nothing can be a means of improvement which is not also a means of preservation. It is not only absurd but contradictory to speak of sacrificing the present generation for the sake of posterity. The moral order of the world is not so disposed. It is impossible to promote the interest of future generations by any measures injurious to the present; and he who labours industriously to promote the honour, the safety, and the prosperity of his own country, by innocent and lawful means, may be assured that he is contributing, probably as much as the order of nature will permit a private individual, towards the welfare of all mankind.

A DISCOURSE AT THE OPENING OF THE LITERARY SOCIETY OF BOMBAY.

These hopes of improvement have survived in my breast all the calamities of our European world, and are not extinguished by that general condition of national insecurity which is the most formidable enemy of improvement. Founded on such principles, they are at least perfectly innocent. They are such as, even if they were visionary, an admirer or cultivator of letters ought to be pardoned for cherishing. Without them, literature and philosophy can claim no more than the highest rank among the amusements and ornaments of human life. With these hopes, they assume the dignity of being part of that discipline under which the race of man is destined to proceed to the highest degree of civilization, virtue, and happiness, of which our nature is capable.

On a future occasion I may have the honour to lay before you my thoughts on the principal objects of inquiry in the geography ancient and modern, the languages, the literature, the necessary and elegant arts, the religion, the authentic history and the antiquities of India, and on the mode in which such inquiries appear to me most likely to be conducted with success.

THE

NOTE

ON

"PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE."

[See pages xix. xx.]

POPULATION OF BOMBAY.

HE public has hitherto received little authentic information respecting the population of tropical countries. The following documents may therefore be acceptable, as contributions towards our scanty stock of knowledge on a subject which is curious and not unimportant.

No. I. is an account of the deaths in the island of Bombay, from the year 1801 to the year 1808 inclusive, founded on returns made to the police office of the number of bodies buried or burnt in the island. These returns being made by native officers, subject to no very efficient check, may be considered as liable to considerable errors of negligence and incorrectness, though exempt from those of intentional falsehood.

The average deaths during the year would, by this account, be nine thousand; but the year 1804, in which the deaths are nearly trebled, was a season of famine throughout the neighbouring provinces on the continent of India. Great multitudes sought refuge from death at Bombay; but many of them arrived in too exhausted a state to be saved by the utmost exertions of humanity and skill. This calamity began to affect the mortality in 1803, and its effects are visible in the deaths of 1805.

No. II. is an account of the Mussulman population; distinguishing the sexes, and conveying some information respecting their age, occupation, and domestic condition. This document and that which follows are the more important, because we have only conjectural estimates of the whole population of the island, which vary from a hundred-and-sixty to a hundred-and-eighty thousand souls. By comparing the Mahometan deaths, on an average for the three years 1806, 1807, and 1808, as collected from No. I., with the whole number of Mahometans in this account, the deaths of the members of that sect appear to be to their whole numbers as 1 to 17.

d

No. III. is an account of the total number of Parsee inhabitants, distinguishing sexes and ages. From the same comparison as that stated in No. II. it appears that the deaths of the Parsees are nearly as 1 to 24.

Nos. IV. V. VI. and VII. contain accounts of population, births, and deaths of native Christians, from four of the parishes into which the island is divided. Their baptismal registers furnish an account of the number of births, which we have no easy and precise mode of ascertaining among the other inhabitants. Their account of deaths is also some check on that part of the general register of deaths which relates to them and their returns of the population are a further aid towards the formation of a general rate of mortality. In No. IV. the births are to the population as 1 to 28, the deaths as 1 to 20. In No. V. the births as 1 to 20, deaths as 1 to 16. In No. VI. births 1 to 30, deaths 1 to 15. In No. VII. births 1 to 43, deaths 1 to 22.

These proportions of births and deaths to population differ very considerably from each other, and some of them deviate widely from the result of the like inquiries in most other places. It is not easy to determine how far inaccuracy may have contributed to this deviation. The education of the native Roman Catholic clergy of Bombay is almost exclusively confined to monastic theology and ethics; even their respectable European superiors are fully occupied by their ecclesiastical duties, and are little accustomed to political arithmetic. On the other hand it must be remembered, that at Bombay, a population of 150,000 souls is confined to an island which is only eight miles in length and three miles in its utmost breadth. Such a population with so limited a space must be considered rather as that of a town than of a district of country. It is to be expected, or at least not to be wondered at, that it should not maintain itself without the influx of inhabitants from the neighbouring provinces. The very small proportions of births in No.VII. probably arises, in part, from the number of adventurous strangers who resort to the most thickly peopled part of the island, while the three former returns, which relate to places where the Christians are native inhabitants, show a proportion of births by no means so singular. That the proportion of deaths in No. VII. is the least among the Christian returns, is in all likelihood to be ascribed to the easy circumstances of many of the members of that congregation, the Christians of the other parishes being chiefly of the very lowest classes. Of the high rate of mortality in Nos. V. and VI. which relate to two small fishing villages, no specious explanation presents itself:-of that, and indeed of every other part of the subject, we must expect explanations from the enlightened and accom

plished men on the spot, who now possess better means of investigation than were in such hands when these imperfect returns were procured.

It must be observed, that many of the Parsees come to Bombay in search of fortune after having reached the age of manhood, and return with a competency to their native countries. Some of them are men of great wealth; many are in easy circumstances; and none are of the most indigent classes. From these circumstances, the comparatively low rate of their mortality and the smaller number of their females will be easily understood. The famine increased their mortality from 311 in 1802, to 563 in 1804; an augmentation almost entirely to be attributed to deaths of the fugitive Parsees, who were attracted to Bombay by the well-known charity of their opulent fellow-religionists.

The Mahometans are much inferior in fortune to the Parsees; but they are not much engaged in the lowest sorts of labour, which are chiefly performed by the inferior casts of Hindus, and by some of the native Christians. The famine increased the deaths of the Mahometans from 1099 in 1802, to 2645 in 1804.

Of the Hindus, who form the great body of the people, we have unfortunately no enumeration; but the return of their deaths has one observable peculiarity. In the higher castes the bodies are burnt; in the lower they are buried. Though there be many individuals of the higher castes who occupy very humble stations, and are of what an European would call very low rank, there are scarcely any of the lowest castes in conditions of ease, not to say affluence:-burning or burial affords therefore some criterion of their situation in life. The famine increased their mortality from 3669 in 1802, to 23,179 in 1804. Their deaths were augmented more than six-fold. But the different degree in which the famine acted on the women and children of the higher and lower castes is very striking. The deaths of the females of the higher castes are increased very little more than those of the men; the mortality of children is still less increased; but among the inferior castes, the mortality of women is increased fifteen times, and that of children nearly twelve times.

On the native Christians the operation of the famine was only to increase the burials from 184 to 201. This small increase probably affected only the poorest native Christians of Bombay; for there are very few Christians in the neighbouring provinces where the famine raged, and which poured into the island that crowd of fugitives which swelled the Hindu deaths to so tremendous an

amount.

One of the most curious results which these documents afford, is that relating to the proportions of the two sexes, and to the extent in which polygamy prevails

in India. An illustrious philosopher*, misled by travellers, too much disposed to make general inferences from a few peculiar cases, and pleased to discover a seeming solution of the repugnant systems of domestic life adopted in Europe and in Asia, supposes the polygamy of Eastern nations to be the natural consequence of the superabundance of women produced in warm climates:-Mr. Bruce attempts to support this theory by a statement of a most extraordinary nature. According to him; in Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Syria, the proportion of births is two women (and a small fraction) to one man; from Latakia to Sidon it is two and three-fourths to one man; from Suez to the Straits of Babelmandel the proportion is fully four to one man, which he believes holds as far as the Line and 30° beyond itt. The confidence with which a private traveller makes a statement so minute respecting such countries is sufficient to deprive it of all authority. Without imputing intentional falsehood to Mr. Bruce, (which seems foreign to his character,) this statement may be quoted as an instance of that dogmatism, credulity, ostentation, and loose recollection, which have thrown an unmerited suspicion over the general veracity of one of the most enterprising of travellers as well as amusing of writers. It is singular that reflections of a very obvious sort did not check such statements and speculations. In a country where there were four women to one man, it is evident that nothing less than the practice of polygamy to the full extent of Mahomet's permission could have provided for the surplus of females; but it ought to have been almost equally evident, that to support more than one wife and family must be beyond the power of the laborious and indigent classes. Though the necessaries of life be fewer, and attainable with less labour in warm than in cold climates, the effects of bad government more than counterbalance the bounty of nature. To suppose that an Egyptian Fellah could support three or four times as many women and children by his industry as a French or English labourer, would be the height of extravagance. Polygamy must in the nature of things be confined to the rich; and must therefore depend not on physical causes, but on those tyrannical systems of government which, sanctioned by base superstitions, have doomed one half of the human race to imprisonment and slavery. But facts are more important than any reasonings, however conclusive. By the report of Mr. Ravenshaw, contained in the very instructive Travels of Dr. Francis Buchanant, we learn, that in the southern part of the province of Canara the whole number of inhabitants was

* De l'Esprit des Loix, liv. xvi. chap. 4.

Fran. Buch. Mysore, iii. 8.

+ Travels, ii. 181. 2d edition.