declare the census incomplete until a general check has been applied, and to take this check census of the numbers only by a schedule combining the de facto and the de jure plans, under the charge of special commissioners for each Province. If Mr. Wood, the late Treasurer of Ontario, Dr. Taché, the present Deputy Head of the Census Bureau, Mr. Costley for Nova Scotia, and some good man for New Brunswick could be appointed to give joint supervision to this check, the work would be done expeditiously and cheaply, and the country would be satisfied; whereas, without it there will be political agitations, commercial and financial uncertainty, and a tendency to relapse from the healthy national bearing we have been hopefully assuming into the old, dead, inglorious, Colonial listlessness.

Unless such a course be taken Canada will not believe that the census figures accurately state the population. The officials set their belief against the general opinion of the country, and no doubt honestly; but what can the officials know? They depend,

to the number of the population of Quebec, so ascertained.

"3. In the computation of the number of members for a Province, a fractional part not exceeding one half of the whole number requisite for entitling the Province to a member shall be disregarded; but a fractional part exceeding one half of that number shall be equivalent to the whole number.

"4. On any such re-adjustment the number of members for a Province shall not be reduced unless the proportion which the number of the population of the Province bore to the number of the aggregate population of Canada at the then last preceding readjustment of the number of members for the Province, is ascertained at the then latest census to be diminished by one-twentieth part or upwards.

"5. Such re-adjustment shall not take effect until the termination of the then existing Parliament." Thus, each lot of 18,315 souls entitles Ontario, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia to a member. Ontario

I will have 88 instead of 82, and 9,122 to spare. Thirty-five more would have given her an extra representative. New Brunswick will have 16 instead of 15; Nova Scotia 21 instead of 19.

of course, upon subordinates, and what subordinate will confess to being guilty of sins of omission or commission? An enumerator may, when too late, remember having left out this family, that manufacturing establishment, but he will not tell of it. On the other hand, almost every one of us knows of some persons omitted from the census; some boarding-house, hotel, public office, or factory passed by, and thus a sort of public consciousness that the total is unfairly low has grown up among the people. We have heard but little of it yet, but we predict that when the subject comes to be discussed in the Legislature, there will be found a most singular unanimity in mistrusting the statements made, and a deep-seated feeling which will lead to acrimonious debates.

in

A radical fault underlies the whole system of census taking in America: those in charge of it attempt too much. We indulge in the expensive luxury of enumeration but once every ten years, and from the very nature of things the people who conduct the operations are new to it, each recurring decade. For, by nothing short of a miracle, can the same official be in charge of two successive census; most of the subordinate officers, clerks, commissioners, enumerators, must have changed positions, if not died, in such an interval; and duties, which of all others require most training and most special study, are thus of necessity placed [in the hands of unskilled, untried and hastily appointed perAt the other end, the like difficulties

sons.

occur.

It does not fall to many of us to fill up census papers at all similarly. The boy of to-day may, in this social atmosphere, be the father of a family in 1881; the clerk will certainly be a merchant; the artizan, perhaps, an independent manufacturer. If any of us then remember, ten years hence, how we have supplied the information lately asked of us, that recollection will probably be useless; we shall again make mistakes and commit errors of omission. Nor is the decennial system at all calcu

lated to remove the prejudices which men of all stations feel against revealing their private affairs. An annual assault upon them might be successful in the end, but a slight stirring of the mud every ten years only, invariably shows them as inveterate as ever. The usual rule in statistical enquiries is to obtain details, because details can be grouped into general heads, whereas general heads cannot be expanded, but in the taking of the census this excellent maxim is stretched too far; special circumstances mark at a given place the limits of the practicable. By attempting too much detail the whole work is rendered costly where it might be cheap, difficult where it might be easy, cumbrous where it should be simple, tardy where it should be rapid, and above all unreliable where it ought to be accurate.

We need not go far to establish the truth of the above. Mr. Hutton, in his report on the Canadian census of 1851, speaks feelingly of the "gross negligence" of the enumerators. The census of 1861 has long been known to be a "monument of incapacity." Even a statistical chain cannot be much stronger than its weakest links. And a singular example of the futility of endeavouring to get by a census, anywhere, accurate particulars of anything beyond the number of the population, is given in the foolish attempt made in the United States to ascertain the months in which most deaths occurred. While the exact and accurate State registrations show September to be the most deadly, the United States enumerators made it May; and the reason is that the census was taken on the first of June, that people best remembered the deaths of the preceding month, but forgot them more and more as the months receded. Grouping the year into quarters, the census made the deaths most numerous in the quarter when they

really were least frequent, and fewest when they really were most numerous. * Again, though nothing is steadier than the annual rate of mortality, the census of 1850 only made 16 per cent of the deaths of a year occur under one year of age; while that of 1860 increased the proportion to 20 per cent. So well indeed is the inaccuracy of the subsidiary results of the census known to the initiated, that no actuary thinks of consulting American census tables to obtain vital statistics, no statesman bases revenue calculations on the information respecting manufactures the census pretends to give. To conclude, when we abandon the attempt to do by means of a census what should be done by means of an effective system of registration, and give over asking about births, deaths, ages and perhaps religions, we shall be more likely to have a reliable statement of the numbers and occupations of our people, and, if wanted, of their national descent. Not until we delegate to commissioners, or specially qualified officials, periodical investigations into the state of our mining, manufacturing or agricultural industries, shall we have reliable accounts of these. The union of the whole into one decennial enquiry, miscalled a census, periodically fires the ambition of a Minister, and then destroys his reputation—and gives to our Bureau a labour which we regret to believe as futile as we know it to be arduous.

The numbers stated in the census, 1860, were 40,741 for May, and only 27,546 for the preceding June! The percentage in each quarter, compared with the State registry, is as follows

June, July, August.. September, October, November

State Registry. 25.81

27.66

December, January, Feb

C

CHAPTER IV.

MARGUERITE AND HER FATHER.

HRISTIAN Kneller was of German

parentage, but he had lived nearly all his life in Paris and, for many years, was well known there as a rich and enterprising print-seller and publisher. One day a pale delicate looking Englishman entered his shop and offered some very clever sketches for sale at a price much below their value. On enquiry Christian Kneller found that the stranger was an artist of great, though peculiar and fantastic, genius who had come to Paris in the hope that his works might meet more appreciation there than they had received in London. Proud, sensitive, shy, he was altogether unfitted to contend with the difficulties which always lie in the way of those who have to create the taste to which their works appeal. One disappointment after another crushed his hopes and energies and weakened his health. In despair he gave up the struggle, and was now dying of consumption brought on by anxiety and privation: compelled at last to sell the sketches and designs on which he had built his hopes of fame for whatever scanty sum the picture-dealers and print-sellers chose to give for them, or to see his wife and child perish with hunger. Christian Kneller's interest was excited by this sad story, and still more by the dying painter's faithfulness to his ideal of art in spite of the ignis fatuus it had proved to him. He bought the sketches at the price they really deserved, not that which the artist's necessities had set upon them, and made every effort in his power to serve him. He found purchasers for the works lying neglected in

the wretched lodging to which the poor artist had been driven, and would have got him fresh commissions had he been able to execute them. But nothing could now restore Edward Hervey's failing strength; he sank rapidly, and died in a few weeks, comforted by the thought that his wife's last days-for she, too, was dying,—would be cared for as his had been, and his child adopted as a daughter by their kind and generous benefactor.

Before many days Christian Kneller laid Madame Hervey beside her husband. He had now to provide a home for the little one thrown on his protection, and her nurse Monica, a simple, affectionate Norman woman, who had taken care of the child from her birth, and would have endured any hardship rather than be separated from her darling.

"Oh, be kind to Monica," said Madame Hervey, the last time she saw Christian Kneller, "be kind to her, and never part her and the child. She has been a good angel to me and mine, and though God will reward her whether man does or not, you to whom He has given so many gifts and, above all, the will to use them nobly, must let Monica also feel your goodness."

"Ah, le bon Dieu! I want nothing," exclaimed Monica, " except to be always near the little one. I would have worked my fingers to the bone, before she should have known want, but she has found a better friend than I could ever be, and all I ask now is leave to stay with her."

"Do you think I could be so cruel as to deprive her of her second mother?" said Christian Kneller. "Certainly, you shall stay with her and, as far as it rests with me, you shall never be separated."