from his coloni and laborers. - M.]
[Footnote 181: Geryones nos esse puta, monstrumque tributum,

Hic capita ut vivam, tu mihi tolle tria.
Sidon. Apollinar. Carm. xiii.

The reputation of Father Sirmond led me to expect more
satisfaction than I have found in his note (p. 144) on this
remarkable passage. The words, suo vel suorum nomine, betray the
perplexity of the commentator.]
[Footnote 182: This assertion, however formidable it may seem, is
founded on the original registers of births, deaths, and
marriages, collected by public authority, and now deposited in
the Controlee General at Paris. The annual average of births
throughout the whole kingdom, taken in five years, (from 1770 to
1774, both inclusive,) is 479,649 boys, and 449,269 girls, in all
928,918 children. The province of French Hainault alone
furnishes 9906 births; and we are assured, by an actual
enumeration of the people, annually repeated from the year 1773
to the year 1776, that upon an average, Hainault contains 257,097
inhabitants. By the rules of fair analogy, we might infer, that
the ordinary proportion of annual births to the whole people, is
about 1 to 26; and that the kingdom of France contains 24,151,868
persons of both sexes and of every age. If we content ourselves
with the more moderate proportion of 1 to 25, the whole
population will amount to 23,222,950. From the diligent
researches of the French Government, (which are not unworthy of
our own imitation,) we may hope to obtain a still greater degree
of certainty on this important subject