Alexandria Daily Advertiser

The French are very desirous to reduce to calculation all the means of their internal prosperity, and an annual statistical account of the departments is promised from the highest authority. The following is the substance of a late communication respecting the department of Seine. The abbot St. Pierre remarked that by the number of births and marriages in great cities, the effects of war and peace might be clearly ascertained, because the dependence of the greater part of the inhabitants is upon the commerce, and the arts which belong to it. M. Gudin, in his supplement to the art of writing history, observed that from 1685 to 1784, births and marriages had increased in peace and evidently diminished after the second year of a war. But he admitted numerous concurring causes in this effect. In the department of the Seine, which embraces Paris, the truth of the observations might be most fully ascertained. For this purpose, M. Allard intends to publish an annual Statistical account, upon the best documents that can be obtained. To assist the design, the following account is given.

The whole department of Seine is given at 46,181 hectares, on present French measures, of which Paris includes, 3,439.- The hectare being 0.5107 of a French acre. According to the last general census, the whole department in 1804 was of 631,530 souls, of whom 149,981 were males who had been in married life. The other males of every age were 138,329, and the females 175,169. The military amounted to 16,738 including every grade. From this census it appeared 305,048 were males, & 326,383 were females. About 60 males to 65 females. -The number of births for the same year was 20,402, and of those not births in marriage, 4,448. The births in Paris only were 17,743, upon a population of five hundred and forty seven thousand seven hundred and fifty six. The number of marriages in all were four thousand two hundred and seventy seven, and in Paris only, three thousand six hundred & seventy six. The divorces in Paris were eight hundred and sixteen, but in the other places of the department only four. The number of divorces in four years had been reduced more than half, and the number of poor in three years nearly a third. In one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine, M. Lavoisier furnished an account of the actual consumption of provisions in Paris, so that at a mean rate the city was supplied with seventy thousand oxen at the mean of seven hundred pounds each, eighteen thousand cows at 360 pounds each, one hundred and twenty thousand calves at 75lbs. each, three hundred and fifty thousand sheep at 50 pounds each, thirty five thousand hogs at 200 pounds each, and nine hundred thousand weight of other animal food.

(Salem Reg.)