and in that of Elizabeth by diocesan returns furnished by
the Bishops to the Privy Council.[148] He farther argued for the
necessity of such a proceeding from the different notions entertained by
men of sanguine or desponding tempers as to the increase or diminution
of the population. "Some desponding men had asserted that the population
had decreased by a million and a half between the Revolution and Peace
of Paris, in 1763; others (of whom the speaker himself was one) believed
that, on the contrary, it had increased in that interval by two
millions." His motion was unanimously adopted by both Houses; and when
the census was taken, its real result furnished as strong a proof of its
usefulness as any of the mover's arguments, by the extent of the
prevailing miscalculations which it detected. For Mr. Abbott, who had
spared no pains to arrive at a correct estimate, while he mentioned that
some persons reckoned the population of England and Wales at 8,000,000,
pronounced that, according to other statements, formed on a more
extensive investigation, and, as it seemed to him, on a more correct
train of reasoning, the total number could not be less than 11,000,000.
In point of fact, excluding those employed in the army and navy, who
were nearly half a million, the number for England and Wales fell short
of nine millions.[149] It would be quite superfluous to dilate on the
value of the information thus supplied, without which, indeed, much of
our subsequent legislation on poor-laws, corn-laws, and all matters
relating to rating and taxation, would have been impracticable or the
merest guesswork.

As was mentioned in the preceding chapter, Pitt found himself unable to
fulfil the hopes which, in his negotiations with different parties in
Ireland, he had led the Roman Catholics to entertain of the removal of
their civil and political disabilities. So rigorous were those
restrictions, both in England and Ireland, that a Roman Catholic could
not serve even as a private in the militia; and a motion made in 1797 by
Mr. Wilberforce--a man who could certainly not be suspected of any
leaning to Roman Catholic doctrine--to render them admissible to that
service, though it was adopted in the House of Commons, was rejected by
the House of Lords. But Pitt, who on that occasion had supported
Wilberforce, did not confine his views to the removal of a single petty
disability, but proposed to put the whole body of Roman Catholics on a
footing o