Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/231

Rh DIVISIONS.] ENGLAND cent, in the first, and 5 5 per cent, in the second decennial period. Much less systematic than the parliamentary are the judicial divisions of the country. There is in all of them a striking want of coherence, even as regards the adminis tration of the law. The circuits of the judges do not con sist of any definite number of the county-court circuits, nor ure the county-court circuits aggregates of the petty sessional divisions. For the purposes of assizes and jail delivery, there are in England eight circuits oi the judges, besides the jurisdiction of the central criminal court in London. The eight circuits of the judges have received the names of the Home, Midland, Norfolk, Oxford, Northern, Western, North Wales, and South Wales circuits, indicating the counties which they embrace. Based chiefly on the old boundaries of hundreds, all the counties of England and Wales have divisions for the purposes of special and petty sessions. By the authority of various Acts of Parliament, the justices at quarter sessions are allowed to alter and re arrange these sessional divisions, making them conformable, if so inclined, to the boundaries of poor-law unions. The last census returns show that in 1871 there were 700 sessional divisions in England and Wales, besides 193 boroughs with petty sessions, 97 of the latter having also separate quarter sessions. For police purposes there were, at the same time, 622 divisions, including 167 boroughs possessing independent police control. Quite as early as the division of the country into hundreds was that into ecclesiastical districts. But they varied much, both in number and extent, up to the time of the Reformation, and there have been constant altera tions up to the present time. The ancient division of the land for ecclesiastical purposes was exclusively into parishes, or districts containing a church ; but as the population went on increasing, and additional places of worship came to be erected, some portions of the old parishes were generally assigned to the newly formed districts. First known simply as chapelries, these districts gradually acquired boundaries as definite, and as fully recognized by law, as those of the parent parish. In recent years, the term parish has acquired a rather uncertain meaning, being used in a twofold sense, the clergy adhering to the old signification of ecclesiastical district, while the poor-law authorities make it the designation of boundaries separately rated for the relief of the poor. In the census returns for 1871, the term &quot; civil parish&quot; was adopted for the poor-law parish, to distinguish it from the ecclesiastical parish. The exact number of ecclesiastical parishes was not ascertained at the census of 1871, which only refers to &quot;ecclesiastical districts,&quot; 3000 in number ; and in the absence of other official information, it is difficult to calculate it, the more so as new parishes are being constantly formed by the action of the Ecclesiastical Commission, established in 1836, by Act 6 and 7 Will. c. 77. According to estimates based on the returns of the Clergy List, there are at present about 13,500 ecclesiastical parishes in England and Wales. They are grouped in 728 rural deaneries, with further division into 78 archdeaconries, 30 episcopal dioceses, and 2 archi- episcopal provinces. Besides the divisions already enumerated, there are vari ous others of minor importance, or not in frequent use. Of this character are the so-called lieutenancy subdivisions, established to carry out the laws affecting the militia. Within the boundaries thus formed, lists are kept contain ing the names of all men liable to serve, under certain cir cumstances, in the militia of England and Wales, so as to keep the force in permanency. A subdivision of another kind is that of the country into highway districts. These divisions were constituted under the Act 25 and 26 Viet, c. 61, which gave power to justices in general, or quarter sessions to form special boundaries, consisting of parishes and places not within the jurisdiction of other boards or legal authorities, for the better management of highways. The Act came into effect in 1863, but its provisions, being optional, were not widely adopted; it led to the formation of not quite 500 highway districts. Their extent and population was not given in the census returns of 1871. In the introduction to the report on the census of England and Wales, the registrar-general furnished a list of the various divisions of the country, showing their complexity. He classed the whole of the existing diviaions, including those made for the special purpose of taking the census, into five orders, as follows: Coiu- Parity 1]ar e *j;* visions. Subdi visions. I. England. Wales... II. Registration Divisions Counties Proper Parliamentary Counties and Divisions of Counties III. Hundreds, Wapentakes, Wards, Liberties, Sokes, and Boroughs Petty Sessional Divisions and Boroughs Lieutenancy Subdivisions Poor Law Unions Registration Districts ... Number of Subdivisions 1 1 11 52 95 1,042 893 621 647 626 IV. Registration Sub-districts 2,195 V. Parishes, Townships, or Places with separate ), - ,,,, returns of population Enumeration Districts 32,543 VI. Parliamentary Boroughs Municipal Boroughs Local Board Districts Towns with Improvement Commissioners. Other Large Towns Highway Districts. 198 224 721 88 96 443 Ecclesiastical Districts 3,000 Commenting upon the extraordinary amount of divisions and sul divisions of England and Wales, the registrar- general remarks that &quot; it is a peculiarity of this country that nearly every public authority divides the country differently, and with little or no reference to other divisions ; each authority appears to be unacquainted with the existence, or at least the work, of the others.&quot; He gives at the same time his opinion that &quot; one simple connected series of subdivisions of the country &quot; would not only simplify the census takings, greatly disturbed at present by &quot;the multiplicity, entanglement, arid want of harmony in the groups,&quot; but would still more be an aid towards reducing &quot; the difficulties of local administration.&quot; 1 1. A rea a&amp;gt;id Population. Vital /Statistics. Emigration. Until the beginning of the present century, there existed Former no other knowledge of the actual area and population of estimates the country but what was given in the vaguest estimates. &quot; f PP U&amp;gt; But there can be little doubt that the population of Eng land and Wales was almost stationary for centuries, owing chiefly to want of intercommunication, which led to famines, more or less severe it being a common occurrence that, while one county, with a good harvest, was revelling in abundance, the people of the adjoining one were starving. It is calculated, on the basis of a number of parish registers, that in 1650 the population of England and Wales numbered 5,450,000, having probably risen less than half a million during the lapse of a century. In the course of another century, when there was a feeble commencement of road- making, the increase amounted, probably, to close upon a million, the calculated population of 1750 being 6,400,000. From that time began a marked increase, and at the talcing of the first census, in 1801, it was ascertained that the