** These districts, administratively distinct, belong topographically to Greater London.
The proportion of married adults (aged twenty and upwards) was found to decrease from 1881 to 1901, being 630 per thousand in the former and 604.5 in the latter year. The marriage-rate per thousand has ranged since 1841 from 14.2 in 1886 to 17.6 in 1873, and is evidently closely associated with the general prosperity of the country, for in the latter year the value of the total imports and exports per head of the population of the United Kingdom was at its highest, and in the former year at its lowest. The five years 1895-1899 exhibited a remarkable sequence illustrative of this:--
+---------+---------------+-------------+ | | Marriage- | Value, | | Years. | Rate. | Exports and | | | | Imports. | +---------+---------------+-------------+ | | | £ s. d. | | 1895 | 15.0 | 17 19 3 | | 1896 | 15.8 | 18 14 1 | | 1897 | 16.0 | 18 14 3 | | 1898 | 16.3 | 19 0 5 | | 1899 | 16.5 | 20 1 8 | +---------+---------------+-------------+
The marriage-rate declined, subsequently to the year last quoted in this table, to 15.6 in 1903. (O. J. R. H.)
_Religion._--In attempting to give a concise account of the religious conditions of England we are confronted from the outset with the absence of any trustworthy statistics. A religious census, such as is customary in other countries, has not been taken since 1851; nor is it probable that such a census would be any true indication of the actual religious beliefs of the population. Still less satisfactory, from this standpoint, is the attempt to compile statistics of religious belief from the registrar-general's report on the number of marriages celebrated in the places of worship of the various denominations; for among those who are practically attached to no religious body, and even some Nonconformists, a prejudice survives in favour of having their marriages celebrated and their funerals conducted by the clergy of the Established Church. Nor is the test of "sittings" provided by the various denominations, nor even the number of their communicants, a trustworthy test of the relative number of their adherents. In Wales, for instance, the rivalry of the sects has multiplied chapel accommodation out of all proportion to the population; while everywhere it happens that churches, at one time crowded every Sunday, have been emptied by the shifting of population or other causes. As for the test of communicancy, it is untrustworthy because the insistence on communion as the pledge of membership varies with the different denominations and even with different sections of opinion within those denominations. Any statistics of this nature, then, however useful they may be as a general indication, must not be treated as conclusive.