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THE IMPOR~NCE OF GENERAL STATISTICAL IDEAS 357
growth in the United States prior to 1860. They were
largely due to the indirect effect of immigration which
has been already referred to.
The populatIOn to which immigrants are largely
added in a few years, owing to the composition of the
population, has its birth-rates momentarily increased
and its death-rates diminished, the birth-rates because
. there are more people relatively at the child-producing
ages, and the death-rates·because the whole population
is younger, than in older countries. It appears quite
unnecessary to elaborate this point. The rates of the
excess of births over deaths in a country which is re-
ceiving a large immigration must be quite abnormal
compared with a country in a more normal condition,
while a country from which there is a large emigration,
such as Ireland, must tend to show a lower excess than
is consistent with a normal condition. This explana-
tion, it may be said, does not apply to England, since
it is a country which has not been receiving a large
immigration or sending out, except occasionally, a large
emigration. England, however, must have been affected
both ways by movements of this character. It received
undoubtedly a large Irish immigration in the earIypart
of last century. and in more recent periods the emigra-
tion in some decades, particularly between 1880 and
1890, appears to have been large enough to have
a sensible effect on both the birth-rate and the rate of
the excess of births over deaths. This effect would be
continued down into the following decade, and the
consideration is therefore one to be taken note of as
accounting in part for the recent decline in birth-rates
in England.
In addition, however, it is not improbable that there
was an abnormal increase of population in the early
part of last century, due to the sudden mul?p1ica~on
of resources for the benefit of a poor populatlOn whIch
had previously tended to grow at a ~ery rapid rate,
and would have grown at that rate but for the checks
of war, pestilence, and famine, on which Malthus en-