In 1822, the Madras Presidency underwent its first census, which returned a population of 13,476,923.The last census of British India held in 1941 counted a population of 49,341,810 for the Madras Presidency.According to the 1871 census, there were 14,715,000 people who spoke Tamil, 11,610,000 people who spoke Telugu, 2,324,000 people who spoke Malayalam, 1,699,000 spoke Canarese or Kannada, 640,000 people spoke Oriya and 29,400 people spoke Tulu.