ll that his utmost
efforts enable him to obtain. If he goes into every house of every town
and village in his district, he is no nearer to an understanding of the
intellectual and moral condition of the nation than he was before: for
other districts have a different soil and different occupations; the
employments of the people, their diseases and their resources, are
unlike; and, under these diverse influences, their physical, and
therefore moral and intellectual condition, must vary. The reports of
Philanthropic Societies do little more for him, drawn up as they are
with partial objects and under exclusive influences: parliamentary
disclosures are of little more use. Vague statements about the increase
of drunkenness, resistance to one kind of law or another, alarm and
distress him; but such statements again are partial, and so often
brought forward for a particular object, that they afford no safe guide
to him who would form a general preventive or remedy. Thus it is under
all partial methods of observation; but when the philanthropist shall
gain access to a register of the national births, marriages, and deaths,
he will have under his hand all the materials he requires, as completely
as if he were hovering over the kingdom, comprehending all its districts
in one view, and glancing at will into all its habitations.

The comparative ages of the dead will indicate to him not only the
amount of health, but the comparative force of various species of
disease; and from the character of its diseases, and the amount of its
health, much of the moral state of a people may be safely pronounced
upon. The proportion of marriages to births and deaths is always an
indication of the degree of comfort enjoyed, and of the consequent
purity of morals; and, therefore, of the degree in which education is
present or needed. A large number of children, and a large proportion of
marriages, indicate physical and moral welfare, and therefore a
comparative prevalence of education. A large number of births, and a
small proportion of marriages, indicate the reverse. When these
circumstances are taken in connexion with the prevailing occupations of
the district to which they relate, the philanthropist has arrived at a
sufficient certainty as to the means of education required, and the
method in which they are to be applied.

There is, unfortunately, in all countries, an insufficiency of records
framed for the purpose of induction, and subsequent