Page:PettyWilliam1899EconomicWritingsVol2.djvu/54

Rh 40. For that there hath been a neglect in the Accompts of the Christnings, is most certain, because until the Year 1642, we find the Burials but equal with the Christnings, or near thereabouts, but in 1648, when the differences in Religion had changed the Government, the Christnings were but two thirds of the Burials. And in the Year 1659, not half, viz. the Burials were 14720 (of the Plague but 36) and the Christnings were but 5670; which great disproportion could be from no other Cause than that abovementioned, forasmuch as the same grew as the Confusions and Changes grew. |42|

41. Moreover, although the Bills give us in Anno 1659, but 5670 Christnings, yet they give us 421 Abortives, and 226 dying in Child-bed; whereas in the Year 1631, when the Abortives were 410, that is, near the number of the Year 1659, the Christnings were 8288. Wherefore by the proportion of Abortives, Anno 1659, the Christnings should have been about 8500: but if we shall reckon by the Women dying in Childbed, of whom a better Accompt is kept than of Stilborns and Abortives, we shall find Anno 1659, there were 226 Childbeds; and Anno 1631, 112, viz. not ½: Wherefore I conceive that the true number of the Christnings, Anno 1659, above double to the 5690 set down in our Bills; that is, about 11500, and then the Christnings will come near the same proportion to the Burials, as hath been observed in former times.

42. In regular Times, when Accompts were well kept, we find that not above three in 200 died in Childbed, and that the number of Abortives was about treble to that of the Women dying in Childbed: from whence we may probably collect, that not one Woman of an hundred (I may say of two hundred) dies in her Labour; forasmuch as there be other Causes of a Womans dying with-|43|in the Month, than the hardness of her Labour.

43. If this be true in these Countries, where Women hinder the facility of their Child-bearing by affected straitening of their Bodies; then certainly in America, where the same is not practised, Nature is little more to be taxed as to Woman, than in Brutes, among whom not one in some thousands do