ARTICLE VI. [From the Southern Quarterly Review.] Material Progress of the United States. Report on the Seventh Census, with accompanying Tables. By J. D. B. DE Bow, Superintendent United States Census. Washington: 1854. The results of the seventh census of the United States just published, are calculated to excite pleasurable emotions in the heart of the philanthropist, as evincing the progress which republican civilization has made over purely monarchical systems of government, and as conducting to show the inherent energies which a free people eminently possess, in planning and laying the foundation of their political and social welfare. These results involuntarily suggest contrasts with the condition of other and older nations, who have enjoyed uninterrupted happiness, so far as a different form of government could confer it, for centuries, and whose political integrity has been maintained throughout the revolutions of contemporaneous history. So recent are the events which led to the discovery and European occupation of the territories of the United States, that it seems but yesterday, that the Indian of the Southwest tilled the earth by digging with fish bones, and whose crops for breadstuff were the wild persimmons which grew luxuriantly over his unhedged plains. So recent, that the red man of the West dwells on the verbal traditions of his fathers, as still monarchs of the North; and the octogenarian can point to Bunker Hill, as being still unstained, in his boyhood's day, with the blood that achieved our independence. Thus, as it were, our nativity was of yesterday-our nationality commenced with to-day. It has not passed through the ordeal of a thousand years, nor yet hardly attained the experience of active puberty. It has yet to reach maturity-to stand before the world in the attitude of full grown manhood, armed at all points with the weapons of peace, and in the unreserved possession of the faculties and powers of a Colossus. The utmost license to speculation, has fallen behind the reality of our progress thus far; what that progress may be hereafter, the most sanguine anticipation may be inadequate to de termine. We have said that involuntary comparisons are suggested with other nations, whose forms of government differ from our own. We believe that naturalists have not gone quite so far, as to accord to one genera of the Caucasian family, pre-eminence over another; nor will we assume that, morally and physically, the Anglo-American is superior to the Anglo-Saxon. If, on this score, there is a universal parity in the Caucasian family, it follows that the prosperity, activity, enterprise and intellectual progress of one offshoot of the family over another, have their origin and inspiration, in the government which such nation adopts, and in the character of their freedom, and the moral efficacy and utility of the institutions which they erect. In this respect, no example of ancient or modern times compares with our own-which incontestibly proves, that the true theory of human happiness and success, consists in the liberty of physical pursuits, and the imposition of only such laws as are calculated to promote and consecrate our freedom. The contest of progressive rivalry in the nineteenth century, has been confined to the United States, France and Great Britain. But both France and Great Britain had passed through almost every political stage toward the attainment of a perfect state of government, before the birth of the American Union. Both had invoked the philosophy and experience of twenty centuries to aid in constructing their social fabrics, and to vindicate every resort to revolution, to bloodshed, to tyranny, or to anarchy. They had built upon the splendid sites, vacated alternately by barbaric and civilized monarchies or commonwealths; and had endeavoured, by cautious diplomacy and rigid discipline, to avoid encountering those fearful disasters which had befallen those cities and empires, which had crumbled and strewn Europe and Asia with their ruins. The people of the United States, on the contrary, had come hither, not only actuated by various and opposite motives, but from countries recognising conflicting systems of government, and severally imbued with antagonistical feelings and prejudices-some seeking an asylum from oppression-some led by a spirit of adventure; some to expiate crimes in banishment; some to better their fortunes; and some, who preferred hardships and exile, with freedom of conscience, to ease and luxury with a trammelled conscience. And of this people-strangers to each other, strangers in their intercourse, and strangers in their sympathies - it was expected to make a nation, unanimous in sentiment, harmonious in action, and concurrent in popular suffrage! How could it be believed, that these adverse and diverse elements should co-operate, fraternize and counsel together, and, as by a word, put all the wheels of a civil and practical government in motion? The leading nations of Europe, of which France and Great Britain were the eminent representatives, had been influenced by circumstances, and tutored by expediencies, until the population of each had been moulded to a unity, and the bond of sympathy, superadded to that of interest, was made complete. They had reached, at the time of the American revolution, that social condition which is wanting in none of the essential qualities of a united family, nor of the filial instincts which become potriotism or martyrdom, in the devotion with which the subject serves his king. But it was a happy coincidence that brought a union among the American colonies; for otherwise, being in the social condition we have described, without any political organization, whatever, as a whole, a hundred years - And might have passed, and found them more unprepared for a sudden transition, than they were then. The cause that united them upon the instant, was not only sacred and holy for even such considerations, although they create sympathy, do not always inspire concert of action-but it was one of those threatened evils, which seemed to embody every wrong, outrage, fraud or oppression, which the colonists, individually, had suffered under their own government, and from which they had severally fled. now, that this embodiment, in the shape of a gigantic scourge, was about afresh to assail them-men who perilled their lives, and that of their families, in the new world, to escape from it-a thrill of spontaneous resistance penetrated every bosom, and the unhealed wounds of each made every one a friend, a brother, or a patriot. It was this final consideration that bound the revoluionists, as by a bond more sacred and more fearful than an oath-their mighty wrongs and which, to the astonishment of Europe, discovered. them presenting their breasts, at the first murmur of war, like a wall between their oppressors and their domestic hearths. "A But, although Europe found a living rampart in these devoted enemies of tyranny, it also found them unexperienced in government, and greatly at fault in matters of science and art. terrible interest," said a parliamentarian, at that day, "may serve to unite that people in what concerns their liberty; but without laws, without government, and without experience-an amalgamation of elements without order and without reserve-a merely excited populace, bent on mischief-it is doubted whether they can even found a government, to say nothing of perpetuating it, or giving to it, by their enterprise or progress in the arts of peace, the prestige of a name. Poor sagacity, and still more miserable reasoning! The war swept over. It left the land desolate; but it had spared the sons and fathers of many a martyr. These men inherited or continued to cherish all their dislike to the governments, the laws, and other authors of their banishment. The feelings by which they had been prompted to enlist in defending their country, they brought into play when they came to consider that a government was to be formed, and was to be left as a heritage to their posterity. Each contributed his share in framing a constitution. Each detailed the grievances, [giving example in his own case,] which might be apprehended from vesting too much or too little power in the proper sources. And, in this way, the evils of every pre-existing form of government were understood, acknowledged and guarded against, in the federal charter; and that instrument has, by its operation, shown the expediency of admitting, on the witnessstand, the scars and unhealed wounds of the early colonists, souvenirs of the false theories of government North: "British Orators." elsewhere, to any logic which might have fallen from lips merely trained to declaim. England and France, as representatives of civilization in Europe, be it remembered, had not yet exhausted the list of purely doctrinal governments. They continued [they have since continued] to invent, after the fathers of the revolution pronounced their labours complete. The wide difference was, and is, that the latter brought to bear the fruits of practical experience from every portion of Europe, and incorporated that experience in the instrument which they framed. The former, who have had no such. fountain of information whence to draw supplies, have merely discarded one theory for another, and are, consequently, behind us nearly eighty years in liberty and legitimate legislation. Having attained the primary object of human welfare-the establishment of civil institutions we have had little to exercise our thoughts but to develop our genius, and push our enterprise to the extent of our ambition. This must account for our unrivalled progress - the realization of that greatness which is as astounding to the rotten despotisms of Europe, as it is gratifying to every well-wisher of the Union. In order to comprehend fully this greatness, we have combined with the census statistics that follow, official data relative to the external commerce of the country. One hundred and fifty years ago, the colonies contained a little over 260,000 white inhabitants, scattered throughout eleven of the now states of the Union. In 1790, the population was 3,929,827; and it is now, [1850,] 23,191,876. Our territorial acquisitions and original possessions extend over an area of nearly 2,000,000,000 acres, or over 2,900.000 square miles. The slopes, or those portions of the United States and territories, which are watered by rivers falling respectively into the two oceans and the Gulf of Mexico, are as follows: Pacific slope.... Atlantic slope... Square miles. 967.576 Mississippi valley. 1,237,311 The continent of America, unlike the continent of Asia and Europe, has its extreme length from north to south. Europe and Asia have their extreme lengths from east to west, and their river basins and river courses slope toward the Arctic and Antarctic regions, or in directions opposite to the great maritime and commercial markets of the world. The United States can have intercourse, by a near route either with India, by the Cape of Good Hope, or the Islands of the Pacific and China, without conferring any transit benefits on either Europe or Central Asia; but Europe and Asia, trading from the Atlantic or Mediterranean, must cross our continent to reach the Pacific seas by a short route, and, of course, contribute, by the intertransit trade, to the welfare of the people of the continent. Nature has also graduated the great slopes of America, that even the principal products of South America, and of Central America, must seek a market outlet in the Gulf of Mexico, which we virtually command, and there mix with the products of the Mississippi valley, which are brought from the region of fur and peltries, to where the sugar-cane introduces us to the climate of the tropics and their fruits. The great basins of both hemispheres measure nearly 9,000,000 square miles, of which Europe, Asia and Africa, have something over one half, and the United States enjoys the control and advantages of the remaining 3,600,000 square miles. The basins of the old world are separated by immense deserts, irreclaimable plateaus and chains of impassable mountains; and their rivers flow in adverse channels to each other, and in directions unfavourable to the changes and wants of commerce. The basins of America concentrate their waters and their products in the Gulf of Mexico, in the bays of the Atlantic coast, or in the harbours of California or Oregon. We have not yet learned to appreciate the value of these bounties, nor can we justly estimate them while a drain upon the productive capacity of our soil, and a limit to the rise of our rivers, remain to be ascertained by the hundreds of millions who may follow us. But important as rivers are to the hygiene of a country, and essential to its soil, man has invented a substitute for the natural canal, in the railroad, which begins to interlace and connect continent with continent. In this, as in other respects, the American people seem to have taken the lead, as the subjoined authentic record will show. States. Railroads of the United States, December, 1854. Dollars. Miles. Miles. 2,614,484 New York........ 83 20,857,357 |