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lations are the number of French Canadians in the Maritime Provinces to be added and the number of French Acadians in New England States to be deducted.
As the French Acadians possess all the characteristics of the French Canadians I do not see why the Professor has been to the trouble of making these additions and subtractions. It would be easier to take the French Acadians and the French Canadians as one.
We have the population of the Acadian French for 1765, taken for the Massachussetts Historical Society. It is given at 3,381. The circumstances were such that the authorities in 1765 knew to a very close approximation the number in the country. Their statement is as accurate as any Census.
If this number is added to the 69,810 French Canadians the whole, for 1765, is 75,191 French. In 1891 there were in all Canada 1,404,974 Acadian and Canadian French and in 1890 in the United States 537,298, making a total of 1,942,272, showing an increase of population in 126 years of 1,867,081. This indicates that the French race in the two countries have doubled in somewhat less than 28 years and just about 27 years if the account is taken of the increment of the French in the United States in the twelve months that intervened between the taking of the United States and the Canadian Censuses.
At any rate this method becomes a test of the accuracy of the other, and the result is a fairly buttressed conclusion that the standard of natural increase of population is a doubling in 27 years.
Apply this rate to the Dominion as a whole.
We have in 1790 a population of 220,000 souls. By natural increase, at the rate adopted, in 1891 these would number 3,060,000. The actual population was 4,833,239. So that the increase has been 1,773,240