23 APRIL 1881, Page 3

The Talcs' correspondent in India states that some results of

the recent Indian census have been published, from which it appears that among the 44,000,000 inhabitants of the North- West Provinces and Gude, the increase of population has been 5 per cent, in nine years, while among the 22,000,000 of the Punjab it has been 6 per cent. As Indian statistics of papilla- tion, owing to the reluctance to mention female children, are rarely in excess, and as Bengal Proper is the most rapidly ad- vancing province, we may assume per cent. per annum to be well under the general rate of increase. That does not seem much, but it means an addition of 1,000,000 a year to the population of British India. Every period of ten years presents her Majesty with a new nation of Indian subjects 10,000,000 strong, or double the whole population of Ireland. This happens, too, in a country where there is little wild land and no unowned land, where outside Bengal the soil is becoming slightly exhausted, and where a clear two-thirds of the people depend upon the produce of agriculture. There is, so far as we know„ no remedy, unless the Brahmins wake up to the danger, and abolish all religious restrietions on emigration—they can do it, for Hindooism in its prime occupied Java,—but it is folly to deny that the increase of population in India constitutes a most formidable problem in the future of that country. We must add that we believe it will be found, when the whole census is published, that we have understated the increase which has occurred during a decade specially 77/Cirked by famine.