The registrar-general, the inspectors, clerks, and other servants employed in the general register office, and the superintendent registrars, will receive fixed salaries, to be defrayed out of the fees, penalties, and other sums received on account of the metropolitan office, and the registrars are to be paid quarterly by the overseers of the poor for all entries of births and deaths according to a scale of 5s. for each of the first ten entries, 2s. 6d. for each of the ten following entries, and ls. for each of the remainder. This pay is by no means exorbitant; its proportion to the number of entries will be a tolerable security against neglect, and we particularly approve of the mode of paying it out of the poor rate, because by that means each person will be taxed to defray the expenses of a register according to the value of the rateable property which he has or occupies within the parish, and rich and poor will be equally eager to obtain its gratuitous inrolment.

The bill does not award any remuneration to clergymen for keeping the registers of marriages, except what they may receive for searches and certificates while each book remains

unfilled in their possession. There is, as we have before noticed, precedent for making them gratuitous registrars, and it may perhaps be thought that the fees for the solemnization of marriage will form a sufficient recompense. We rather point attention to the fact than offer any opinion respecting it.

SEARCHES may be made, and certified copies obtained, either in the parishes or at the metropolitan office. In the former case, application must be made to the person who, according to the provisions of the bill, shall, for the time being, have the keeping of the books, and they are considered to be in the keeping of the minister of the parish, after they have been deposited in the parish chest. Blanks are left in the bill for the fees, but it is intended that a certain sum shall be paid for every general search and for each certificate, and that particular searches shall be charged according to the number of years through which they extend. At the metropolitan office, where parties will be entitled to search only the indexes, the same mode of charging will be adopted, though probably the amounts will be different (higher) as they are regulated by a

different section of the bill. There may perhaps be some inconvenience in parties being compelled to travel round to the different places of worship in a parish in order to search for a recent marriage, and to a stranger the discovery of all these might present some difficulty. As the registrar is required to have his name and abode painted on wood near the door of every church, chapel, workhouse, and house of industry in his district, it might also be desirable that the name and situation of every place of worship licensed for the solemnization of marriage should be affixed in some public place.

In the tabular forms of entering births, deaths, and marriages, the object is to make them as complete as may be consistent with accuracy. The extreme imperfection of the present forms in identifying the parties to which they refer, has been already pointed out. The improved forms of registering would, according to the bill, be as follows:

In all these, the eye would be assisted in searching, if the surname were written first in the first column. In entries of births and deaths the sex would be sufficiently apparent from the name and might be omitted. In the entry of a birth, the name and maiden surname of the mother, and the place and time of the parents' marriage, will serve to determine the identity of the party and facilitate the completion of a connected pedigree; with the same view we would insert the abode of the father as well as his "rank or profession," be cause, under the provisions of the bill, the birth must always be registered in the parish in which the child is born, though that may often happen not to be the parish in which the father usually resides. The abode should also be added to the "rank or description" in the entries of deaths and marriages. In these, also, more complete information would perhaps be supplied, if, instead of a reference to the place "where born," the inquiry were, in case of marriage," where born, or where previously married if married before, and when;" and in case of death, "where born if unmarried, or where last married and when;"-by these means all the circumstances affecting each individual would be disclosed on the register in a more connected manner, each entry referring immediately to the last entry made respecting the same person; this may seem to be more complicated, but would not, we think, present much difficulty in practice, the place of marriage being as easily ascertained as that of birth, and the matter might be greatly facilitated if every person registering a birth or marriage were directed at the time to give a certificated copy of the entry to the parties, as the practice would then in a short time become general of producing the certificate of the last entry when the next occasion arose for registration. It should also be borne in mind that these references are not legal evidence of the facts to which they allude, but merely guides to the inquirer. The form for the entry of deaths does not include any column for specifying the disease, accident, or other cause of death; yet it is stated in the evidence of several of the most able witnesses, and indeed is sufficiently apparent, that this would be of very great value, especially to medical science-it would denote the different complaints prevailing or decreasing throughout the country at

different periods what particular complaints distinct parts of the country might be more or less liable to or exempt from

what complaints prevailed in the different ranks and occupations of life compared with each other and hence it might be inferred what were the general moral or licentious habits at each period, or in each district, or of each occupation, and what soil or situation or other local circumstances might engender or discourage any disease-in fine, the specification of the causes of death might in a few years establish important statistic and medical conclusions, at which we have at present no possible means of arriving. We would, therefore, add a column for the cause of death; we will afterwards suggest what appears to us the best mode of obtaining the information to fill it.

If the forms were modified according to these suggestions they would stand thus:--