Current Literature
Tag Newmarch lectures delivered by Dr. James Bonar in 1929 (Theories of Population from Raleigh to Arthur Young, by James Bonar, M.A., LL.D., Allen and Unwin, 10s. 6d.) are published with certain additions in a volume which traces the rise of demography, vital statistics and theory of population as subjects of scientific study. The author does this by quotation from judicious comment on various writers who preceded Malthus, such as Bacon, Hobbes, Graunt, Petty and Price, whose speculations were unsupported by the figures for which many of them craved. The first census was only held in the country in 1801. Little emerges in the way of scientific theory, but Dr. Bonar covers the ground learnedly and agreeably with many shrewd remarks of his own.
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