Page:William Petty - Economic Writings (1899) vol 1.djvu/84

lxxvi be, in their individual occurrence, the sport of chance, was first made evident by Graunt's studies. One of his earliest observations is, "That among the several Casualties some bear a constant proportion unto the whole number of Burials; such are Chronical Diseases, and the Diseases whereunto the City is most subject; as for Example, Consumptions, Dropsies, Jaundice, Gout, Stone, Palsie, Scurvy, Rising of the Lights or Mother, Rickets, Aged, Agues, Fevers, Bloody Flux and Scowring: nay, some Accidents, as Grief, Drowning, Men's making away themselves, and being Kill'd by several Accidents, &c. do the like ." From the regularity of these phenomena, however, for example of suicide, Graunt deduces no such moral implications as Quetelet and Buckle, not to mention living writers, have sought to place upon it. In the second place Graunt first noted the excess of male over female births and the approximate numerical equality of the sexes, and upon it he bases some remarks about Divine approval of monogamy. His suggestion had great vogue and is often repeated. The third among the important facts which Graunt discovered is the high rate of mortality during the earlier years of life; the fourth is the excess of the urban over the rural death rate. In establishing the first two of these four facts Graunt called attention to truths previously unrecognized. It is not improbable, on the other hand, that the facts regarding mortality had been conjectured before his time. But he was the first to verify conjecture by observations so extended that they resulted in demonstration. Proof, indeed, is the characteristic feature of his book. The fulness of his proof and the care with which he elaborates it raise his "Observations" to a higher plane than is reached by any similar investigation of social phenomena during the century that lies between Graunt and Süssmilch.

It cannot be contended that Graunt was completely master of the method of investigation to which he made noteworthy contributions. His imperfect apprehension of the so-called law of large numbers appears clearly in his discussion of the country bills. "The proportion," he says "Between the greatest and the least mortalities in the Country is far greater than at London... as in London in no Decad the burials of one year are double to those