POPULATION

The present state of population may be easily seen by the account of the number of people in this Government, taken about a twelve month ago (*. There is great reason to believe this Colony has been upon the decrease in this respect, for near twenty years past; the wars which they have been almost constantly carrying on; the strictness with which marriages within certain degrees of consanguinity were forbidden, except by dispensation, the obliging strangers inclined to engage in that state, previously to prove their not being married before, and the prohibition of intermarriage between Protestants and Roman Catholicks, were so many bars to the propagation of the species ; these difficulties are now, in a good measure removed ; the men are an active, strong, and healthy race, the women extremely prolifick, and in all human probability the next twenty years will produce a vast increase of people.

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