Sadler, in the first place, that we inserted the vowel
which amuses him so much, not from ignorance or from carelessness, but
advisedly, and in conformity with the practice of several respectable
writers. He will find the word hecatare in Ree's Cyclopaedia. He will
find it also in Dr Young. We prefer the form which we have employed,
because it is etymologically correct. Mr Sadler seems not to know that a
hecatare is so-called, because it contains a hundred ares.

We were perfectly acquainted with the extent as well as with the name of
a hecatare. Is it at all strange that we should use the words "250,
or rather more," in speaking of 258 and a fraction? Do not people
constantly employ round numbers with still greater looseness, in
translating foreign distances and foreign money? If indeed, as Mr Sadler
says, the difference which he chooses to call an error involved the
entire argument, or any part of the argument, we should have been guilty
of gross unfairness. But it is not so. The difference between 258 and
250, as even Mr Sadler would see if he were not blind with fury, was
a difference to his advantage. Our point was this. The fecundity of a
dense population in certain departments of France is greater than that
of a thinly scattered population in certain counties of England. The
more dense, therefore, the population in those departments of
France, the stronger was our case. By putting 250, instead of 258, we
understated our case. Mr Sadler's correction of our orthography leads us
to suspect that he knows very little of Greek; and his correction of our
calculation quite satisfies us that he knows very little of logic.

But, to come to the gist of the controversy. Our argument, drawn from
Mr Sadler's own tables, remains absolutely untouched. He makes excuses
indeed; for an excuse is the last thing that Mr Sadler will ever want.
There is something half laughable and half provoking in the facility
with which he asserts and retracts, says and unsays, exactly as suits
his argument. Sometimes the register of baptisms is imperfect, and
sometimes the register of burials. Then again these registers become all
at once exact almost to an unit. He brings forward a census of Prussia
in proof of his theory. We show that it directly confutes his theory;
and it forthwith becomes "notoriously and grossly defective." The census
of the Netherlands is not to be easily dealt with; and the census of the
Netherlands is therefore pronounced