Historian: In the Drindian Empire, censuses were conducted annually to determine the population of each village.
Village census records for the last half of the 1600s are remarkably complete. This very completeness makes one point stand out: In five different years, villages overwhelmingly reported significant population declines. Tellingly, each of those five years immediately followed an increase in a certain Drindian tax.
This tax, which was assessed on villages, was computed by the central government using the annual census figures. Obviously, whenever the tax went up, villages had an especially powerful economic incentive to minimize the number of people they recorded, and concealing the size of a village’s population from government census takers would have been easy. Therefore, the reported declines probably did not happen.
In the historian’s argument, the two portions in
boldface play which of the following roles?
A. The first provides evidence to support the main conclusion of the historian’s argument; the second presents that conclusion.
B. The first is a claim which the historian seeks to evaluate; the second presents evidence in order to call that claim into question.
C. The first is a consideration that is advanced to counter evidence that weighs against the historian’s conclusion; the second provides evidence to support that conclusion.
D. The first provides a context for certain evidence that supports the position that the historian seeks to establish; the second provides evidence to support the main conclusion of the argument.
E. The first provides a context for certain evidence that supports the position that the historian seeks to establish; the second is the main conclusion of the argument.