The census, 1801–1891

Abstract

INCIDENT OF THE CENSUS. The following specimen of womanly assumption was given in one of the census returns not a hundred miles from College Street, Portsea: ‘Jane – wife, head of the family, mangle woman John – husband, turns my mangle.’ Portsmouth Times How much a government should know about its subjects has long been a matter of controversy. There is, therefore, nothing archaic about the altercation given below, between a supporter and an opponent of a bill to take an annual census of England and Wales, a bill that was hotly debated in the House of Commons in the spring of 1753. [A census], it is said, can answer no purpose but that of an insignificant and vain curiosity, as if it were of no consequence for the legislature to know when to encourage and when to discourage or restrain the people of this island, or of some particular part of it, from going to settle in our American Colonies. Do gentlemen think, that it can be of no use to this society, or indeed to any society, to know when the number of its people increases or decreases; and when the latter appears to be the case, to enquire into the cause of it and to endeavour to employ a proper remedy … Even here at home do not we know, that both manufactures and the number of people have in late years decreased in some parts of the Kingdom? […]

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