If Crooksley were to return four members to Parliament, I wouldn't be one of them.
THE CENSUS.
Important days to all householders in the United Kingdom, were Sunday and Monday, the 6th and 7th ult., and especially perplexing to those whose ideas of reading and writing were at all circumscribed. Nor was the discomfort confined to the said illuminated members of society. Ladies of a very certain age bridled up at being obliged to tell the number of summers that had passed over their heads: notwithstanding the loop-hole of the "five years" which the gallantry of the commissioners allowed them. Elderly gentlemen also, who wore dark wigs that hid those auricular tell-tales of the ci-devant jeune homme, the ears, inwardly execrated the system of exposure to which the census paper gave rise, and willingly ran the risk of a fine "not more than five pounds, nor less than forty shillings," rather than be classed as old bachelors.
From returns into which the commissioners have allowed us to peep, it appears that of the middle-aged population of these kingdoms, one in three has grown five years younger since the date of the last census; one in seven two years younger; one in twelve remains of the same age; one in thirty-eight, is five years older than at the period referred to; and one in five hundred and sixty has attained the full age that might have been anticipated from the lapse of years. We believe it has been distinctly ascertained by these returns that the highest age among the unmarried ladies in this country is twenty-nine—the average age is twenty-one and seven-eighths. The widows willing to marry again, are mostly quite juvenile; and it is a remarkable fact that many are younger now, as widows, than they appear to be in the previous return as wives. Indeed the effect of the whole calculation is to show, perhaps in compliment to our young Queen, that her subjects are the most decidedly juvenile people in Christendom.
Nor was the designation of the respective professions and callings of our fellow-countrymen a task of less difficulty. Commonplace and even plebeian, as is the simple question "Who are you?" widely as the interrogation was diffused a short time back by the gamins of London, it is a query we opine, in common with the cool audacious Mr. Dazzle, that would puzzle half the world to answer properly. Some are all profession—others are not any. Thousands live by their wits—thousands more by the total absence of them; many whom the world gives credit to for working hard in an industrious état for their income, privately lead the lives of gentlemen; and many gentlemen whom we envy on account of their ostensible otiose existence, labour perchance in secret much harder than ourselves. Numbers would shrink if their employment was known, and numbers more would be extremely indignant if any other than their own was assigned to them.
The schedule stated that the professions of wives, or sons and daughters, living with and assisting their parents, needed not to be inserted. There was no mention at all made of the professions of faithless lovers, election candidates, and false friends; probably these were imagined to be of so little value as to be utterly beneath notice.
But although the commissioners were pleasantly minute and clear in their instructions for filling up their circulars, they will still be wide away from the real statistics of the population, when all the bills are returned and the totals properly added. What industrious enumerator, we would ask, did, with praiseworthy indefatigability, leave a schedule at the temporary habitations of the thousand individuals who on the Monday in question were located upon Ascot Heath, in anticipation of the approaching races? Who dared to penetrate into the mysteries of the yellow caravans there collected, or invade the Bohemian seclusion of the tilted hovels? What account was taken of the roadside tent-holders, and the number of the families of these real "potwallopers?" Is the following paper relating to these people, which has fallen into our hands, the mislaid document of a careless enumerator of the Sunning-hill district, or is it an attempt to play upon our credulity:
(COPY.)