demoralising influence of Southern institutions, and which show the productiveness of the South, and the interest Europe has in the free developement of Southern resources. Statistics are generally shunned as dry and tedious, but when they are adduced to vindicate the character of a whole people, they surely deserve careful attention and ought not to be esteemed wearisome. My figures are taken principally from the United States Census of 1850, the census of 1860 not being completed or published. The following is a comparative table of the population in 1840 and 1850, and, according to the published returns, in some of the States since 1850, the ratio of increase has not been less favourable to the South: 4,543,312 6,113,308 170,335 210,955 2,519,087 3,112,806 Other States 22,732 27,463 245,817 288,548 8,276 8,960 327,038 384,984 5,524 6,422 183,057 239,459 397 58,161 54.333 449,087 472,528 74,723 89,737 90,360 From this return it would seem as if the white population increased much more rapidly at the North than at the South, but it happens that in 1850, out of 2,240,585 born in foreign countries, only 283,503 resided in the Southern States, and 1,957,032 in the other States of the Union. The excess of increase in the North, then, is due to immigration. The free-coloured return is significant. In the South, from 170,000 the number increased in ten years to 210,000, being an increase of 40,000. In the North, the increase upon 215,000 was only 7,500. The free-coloured do not find a welcome home in the North. The traducers of the South constantly refer to mean whites' or 'white trash.' They say the majority of the whites are semi-savage, that they are idle lawless vagabonds thoroughly despised by a small ruling minority. A Northern advocate, in a work recently published, estimates the mean whites' or 'white trash' at 'five millions of human beingsabout seven-tenths of the whole white population.' Four millions of slaves cruelly oppressed by their masters, and seven-tenths of the white population consisting of thieves and ruffians, is the picture presented to our view. It is loaded with falsehood, for on such terms no community could exist, and the property and lives of the ruling minority would not be worth a month's purchase. But not only are these statements about mean whites' and 'white trash' monstrously absurd, but there is not a vestige of truth in them. The chief pursuit of the South is agriculture. In 1850, according to the census of the United States, the total free population was 6,300,000, of which about 3,200,000 were males, and of these not more than 1,700,000 were above twenty years of age, and not making any allowance for those who were unfitted for labour, either by reason of infirmity or old age, we must admit that 1,700,000 is an over-estimate of the number of free males in the South who could labour in 1850. Of these 1,700,000 there were employed in agriculture: Thus 50 per cent. of the free male working population was entirely engaged in agriculture. The number of farms in the Southern States, together Thus, out of 840,929 free males engaged in agriculture, 563,138 were farming on their own account; and, allowing for family and other partnerships, we must conclude that the whole of the free agricultural population of the South consists of farmers, and not of farm servants. Where are the seven-tenths of 'white trash?' Further, we are told these five millions, or seven-tenths of white trash, are 'too poor to keep slaves and too proud to work.' Let the United States census answer. In 1850 the number of families, white and free coloured, in the Southern States- and, according to the United States census, 'a family in the census is either one person living separately in a house or part of a house, and providing for him and herself, or several persons living together upon one common means of support,' so that every one occupying separate apartments is counted as a family-was as follows: The following was the classification of slaveholders throughout the United States: |