Page:Statesman's Year-Book 1871.djvu/773

 AREA AND POPULATION. 73 f

It will be seen from the preceding table, that among the natives of the colony the sexes are nearly equally balanced, while they are far from being so among the immigrant population. Yet here, too, exist enormous differences. The immigrants from Scotland and Ireland seem more generally to be accompanied by their families than those from England, while among the foreign immigrants the disproportion in the sexes is very striking. The Germans alone have any considerable number of females among them, and the rest of foreigners are nearly all males. The disproportion is most un- favourable among the Chinese settlers, consisting of more than 24,000 males, but only eight females. The enumeration of persons born within the colony includes 1,004 aborigines, namely, 1,046 males and 648 females.

Being the most populous as well as the most progressive of the colonies of Australasia, the mixture of races here has had already notable results. According to a report of the Registrar-General, a gradual change is taking place in the national type of the population of Victoria. It is stated that, in consequence of the variance of nation- ality, there is an important movement continually jroing on by the process of marriage, and although this change has hitherto been little heeded by those effecting it, yet it is one that must influence the social and political development of the future life of the colony. The distinctive characteristics of English, Irish, and Scotch emi- grants are rapidly breaking down, and another national type is being developed in the shape of an Australian people. In order to de- termine the extent to which existing national types are being fused, the Registrar-General refers to the nationality of the married popu- lation. Out of 25,908 males who married in Victoria during the six years from 1861 to the end of 1866, there were 12.664 Englishmen, of whom 7.152, or 56 per cent., married English women. On the other hand, out of 25,908 women who married in the same period, 0,718, or 37 per cent., were English, and of these 7,152, or nearly 74 per cent., married Englishmen. Again, as many as 3,065, or nearly 10 per cent., of the Englishmen married Irish women ; as a striking contrast to which, only 573, or less than 6 per cent., of the English women married Irishmen. During the same period, 4,422 Irishmen married the same number of Irish women, the former being 80 per cent, of the Irishmen, and the latter 48 per cent, of the Irish women who married. Of 59 Chinese males who married, 28, or 47 per cent., married Irish women ; half that number, or 24 percent., married English women; 11, or 19 per cent., married Australian-born women : 2, or 3 per cent., married Scotch women ; and the same number and percentage married Welsh women and Ger- man women. Out of every 100 marriages, 28 were between English males and English females. 17 were between Irish males and Irish

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