a judgment which condemns some book, person, or action. An ecclesiastical censure is a sentence of condemnation or penalty inflicted on a member of the church for mal-conduct, whereby he is deprived of the communion of the church, or prohibited from exercising the sacerdotal office.

CENSUS is now almost solely used to denote that enumeration of the people made at intervals in most European countries, and in Britain decennially. The term had its origin in Rome, where a group of the many functions performed by the high officer called censor received the name of census. An enumeration of the people was only one of them, but they were chiefly of a statistical character. They were especially directed to fiscal objects; and it does not appear that the enumeration of the people was then deemed of value as a source of statistical knowledge which might influence morals and legislation. It was connected with the Servian constitution, which apportioned the rights and duties of citizens to the amount of property, dividing them into six classes, which were subdivided into centuries by a mixed ratio of wealth and numbers. Had the enumeration been deemed of value for any such other purposes besides the adjustment of rights and obligations, as those for which statistical knowledge is now deemed so valuable, the notices preserved of the vast collection of statistical facts thus made would have been less scanty and meagre, and we would not have found it so impracticable to come to any conclusion about the population and extent of the city of Rome itself. The Roman census must have been minute and full. It indicated not only the number and respective classes of all free persons, but their domestic position as husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, and sons and daughters. The slaves and freedmen were indicated in connection with the possessions of the head of the house, and landed property was analyzed into several classes according to its character and produce. The important practical effect of the census caused it to be conducted at intervals generally so frequent as every fifth year. It was followed by a sacrifice of purification or lustration, whence the term of five years came to be denoted a lustrum. There were highly penal consequences to the citizen who neglected his registration for the census, to whom as an unregistered person the name of incensus was given. From the mixed functions to which it was applied, we have the word used among the Romans to signify the patrimony or property qualification of a particular grade—as census senatorius and census equester; and we have it employed in later times to indicate taxation. Hence census dominicus, implying a feudal tax to the superior; census duplicatus, a double tax or feudal casualty; and the word census used by old English writers was abbreviated in modern use into cess.

While the word census was thus applied to the taxation of the middle ages, it will readily be understood that in its modern sense it received no practical application, since neither taxation nor the adjustment of social rank required a numbering of the people; and the statistic or economic ends of such a process were as little known as they had been to the Romans. Under the despotic governments of the Continent, however, the tendency to central organization for purposes of administration and police, prepared the way for statistical inquiries into the numbers of the inhabitants of particular areas whenever there should occur an occasion for enumerating them. It was in Britain, with its abstinent government and unrestrained people, that the want of population statistics became most flagrantly conspicuous. It is difficult at present to realize the idea that, long after Adam Smith's day the number of the inhabitants of the British empire could only be guessed at as the populousness of China is at the present day; and, as in all matters of statistics, which have their own simple solution through specific inquiry, the guesses about the population of the empire were not only vague but extravagantly contradictory. During the eighteenth century, the most trustworthy geographers were generally those who did not venture on an estimate of the population even in those European states which had the best means of enumeration at their command.

The first effort to take a census of the population of Great Britain was made in 1801; it did not then extend to Ireland. The success which attended this and the two succeeding efforts was mainly owing to the zeal and ability of Mr Rickman, the assistant-clerk of the House of Commons. Where there is an organization like that of many in the European states for preserving a constant official record of all the fluctuations of the population, not only in their absolute numbers throughout a whole territory but in the relative numbers in its respective parts as they may be affected by fluctuations, systematic arrangements are thus prepared not only for obtaining a general census at any one moment, but for checking its accuracy and classifying its elements. But to deal at once with the raw material in the self-governed British empire, required great ingenuity and sagacity. A census, to be accurate, must be taken on a uniform system, and must be taken simultaneously. Any enumeration going over a tract of time, were it but two days, must be more or less inaccurate, and destitute of the means of correcting its own inaccuracies. Besides the mere abstract numbers of the people, there is much collateral information to be recorded. This, besides its own intrinsic value, is necessary as a check on the numbers; since a distribution into elements according to sex, age, social condition, occupation, and the like, affords a self-acting control on the accuracy of mere figures. In a census, indeed, it is a simple rule, that the information returned should be ramified as far beyond the main facts as with safety to these it can be carried. The tendency towards complexity in the nature of the returns must always be checked by the liability of the people at large to make blunders and create confusion where they are required to attest facts not of the most obvious nature, and by the difficulty of getting a number of subordinate officers to understand and carry out a complex classification. Hence there has been great difficulty in obtaining a classification according to occupation, from its complex intermixture with the classification according to families. Thus, even in the first census, there was an attempt to classify the people under three divisions—(1.) Persons chiefly employed in agriculture; (2.) Persons chiefly employed in trade, manufactures, or handicraft; and (3.) All other persons not comprised in the two preceding classes. But Mr Rickman found the returns unsatisfactory, from the difficulty of deciding "whether the females of the family, children and servants, were to be classed as of no occupation, or of the occupation of the adult males of the family." In the two subsequent enumerations, the rule adopted was to record the occupation of the head of the family; but here comes a new element of confusion, in the difficulty of defining the head of a family. Experience, and an anxious desire to accomplish simplicity and comprehensiveness in the returns, were the only means by which such difficulties could be mitigated.

The enumerations of 1841 and 1851 in England were much facilitated by the uniform system of registration of births, marriages, and deaths, established in 1836, which not only afforded the means of checking the accuracy of the returns, but provided a prompt and skilled machinery accustomed to statistical work. Far more dependence could now be placed on the discretion and skill of the officers to whom the local duties were committed; and the returns were made more minute and complete. Scotland and Ireland are perhaps the only considerable countries in Christian Europe where there is no uniform system of registration. In Scotland it was necessary to adopt the clumsy method of employing the parish schoolmasters to perform the local duty in the country districts. In Ireland the first attempt at a general census was made in 1811, but it was decidedly unsuccessful. It was repeated in 1821, but went no further than a bare enumeration, of doubtful accuracy. The census there taken in 1831 was subject to correction in 1834, to make it the basis of the new system of national education. In the two subsequent enumerations the aid of the admirable constabulary force, and the use of an ordnance survey, nearly complete in 1841, have gone far to supply the want of permanent local statistical machinery.

The census of 1851 was taken on the 31st day of March, the previously distributed schedules being then collected. They embraced a return of the local and other conditions of the population during the preceding night. "At the present census," say the commissioners, "it was resolved to exhibit, not merely the statistics, as before, of parishes, and more completely of parliamentary and municipal boroughs, but also of such other large towns in England and Scotland as appeared sufficiently important for separate mention, and of all the ecclesiastical districts and new ecclesiastical parishes which, under the provision of various acts of parliament, have, during the last forty years, been created in England and Wales. In addition also to the inquiry concerning the occupation, age, and birth-place of the population, it was determined to ascertain the various relationships (such as husband, wife, son, daughter), the civil condition (as married, unmarried, widower, or widow), and the number of persons blind, deaf, and dumb." The relation of our large towns to parochial divisions has always been felt as a statistical want, but it may be questioned if it has been quite accurately supplied; and at least one important blunder has occurred in reference to Glasgow.

Another novel feature in the census of 1851 was an attempt to supply the statistics of the ecclesiastical and educational condition of the country. It stated the amount of church accommodation at the command of each religious denomination; while a return was procured of those in attendance in the several churches on Sunday 30th March. The attendance throughout thirty-five religious communities in England on that forenoon was returned as 4,428,338, of which the proportion assigned to the Establishment was 2,371,732. The returns for Scotland, admittedly very imperfect, give a total of 943,951, of which 351,454 belonged to the Establishment. These results are mentioned as characteristics of this novel feature in the periodical enumerations—they were accompanied by many others of a standing and interesting character, on which the present is no fit occasion for enlarging. The English report was accompanied by an elaborate history of the several religious communities, valuable certainly in itself, though a questionable service to be performed by officers whose duties are purely statistical.

The two later enumerations in Ireland exhibit statistical novelties of a totally different kind. In 1841 it was resolved, as that country so totally depended on the amount of its agricultural produce, to obtain the statistics of its rural economy. The surface of the country was divided under five heads—arable, plantations, uncultivated, towns, and water; and, with a view to these divisions, a return was made of the character of each farm or other agricultural allotment, with the quantity of live stock, and other relevant facts. The attempt was found so successful, that it was renewed on the same principle, and with more full effect in 1851, producing 727 tabular folio pages of very valuable information.

For the results of census enumerations, and their connection with statistics, reference must be made to the different geographical heads, and to the articles POPULATION and STATISTICS.