his own means, or by any means that the state is likely to provide; but where the population is dense, and especially in towns, it is quite practicable to give to every child the rudiments of education without onerously taxing the community. This is almost literally true in all the New England states and New York, and is said to be the case in the kingdom of Prussia. It is true that, in the north-western states, and particularly those which are exempt from slaves, the number of their elementary schools is much greater than that of the southern or south-western states, although their population is not much more dense; but, besides that, the settlers of those states, who were mostly from New England or New York, brought with them a deep sense of the value and importance of the schools for the people; they were better able to provide such schools, in consequence of their making their settlements, as had been done in their parent states, in townships and villages. We thus see that Michigan, which has but a thin population even in the settled parts of the state, has schools for nearly one-seventh of its population. The wise policy pursued first in New England, and since by the states, settled principally by their emigrants, of laying off their territory into townships, and of selling all the lands of a portion before those of other townships are brought into market, has afforded their first settlers the benefits of social intercourse and of co-operation. In this way, they were at once provided with places of worship, and with schools adapted to their circumstances.

"In some states, the primary schools are supported by a tax, as Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont; in others, by a large public fund, as in Connecticut, Virginia, and some others; and others, again, partly by the public treasury, and partly by private contribution, as in New York. In both the last cases, the children are not considered as educated at the public expense, though the difference between them and the first class of cases is essentially the same, so far as regards the public bounty.

"Of the three descriptions of schools, the elementary, by their great number, seem to be far the most deserving of consideration, if we look merely to their direct influence on individuals; but if we regard the political and general effects of each, it is not easy to say which contributes most to the well-being of the community. The primary schools give instruction and improvement to the bulk of the voters, the great reservoir of political power. The grammar schools educate that class whose views and feelings mainly constitute public opinion on all questions of national policy, legislation, and morals, and who thus give political power its particular directions. It is from the least numerous class— the collegiate that the most efficient legislators, statesmen, and other public functionaries are drawn, as well as those professional men who take care of the health, the rights, and the consciences of men.

"There is an important class of instructors, of which the census takes no separate notice that is the ministers of religion, who, once a week or oftener, besides performing the rites of worship, each according to the modes of his sect, indoctrinate large congregations in articles of faith, and inculcate man's religious and moral duties. The number of ministers of every denomination was computed to exceed 20,000, at the taking of the last census, and the deeply-interesting character of the topics on which they treat gives to this class of teachers a most powerful influence over the minds of men; but fortunately it is so divided by the mutual counteractions of rival sects, that it can no longer upheave the foundations of civil society, or seriously affect the public peace; yet the influence of the ministers over their respective followers is rather enhanced than diminished by the rivalry of different sects, and the more as they are all improving in information and oratorical talent. They now bear away the palm of eloquence, both from the bar and the deliberative assemblies. If this vast moral power spends its force yet oftener on speculative subtilties, than on awakening emotion or influencing conduct; if it aims, in a word, more to teach men what to think, than how to feel or to act, this circumstance affords, perhaps, as much matter of congratulation as regret, when we recollect how easy the pure, mild, and healthy influence which religion might exert, and which we sometimes see it exert, could be converted into bitter intolerance and the excesses of wild fanaticism.

"There is yet another source of popular instruction-the periodical press-which is noticed by the census as a branch of manufacturing industry, and which is exclusively occupied, not only with worldly affairs, but with the events of the passing hour. It keeps every part of the country informed of all that has occurred in every other, that is likely to touch

men's interests or their sympathies-volcanoes, earthquakes, tempests, conflagrations, and explosions. Nor, in attending to the vast, does it overlook the minute. No form of human suffering escapes its notice, from the miseries of war, pestilence, and famine, to the failure of a merchant, or the loss of a pocket-book. Every discovery in science or art, every improvement in husbandry or household economy, in medicine or cosmetics, real or supposed, is immediately proclaimed, as are all achievements in any pursuit of life, whether in catching whales or shooting squirrels, or in riding, running, jumping, or walking. There scarcely can be an overgrown ox or hog make its appearance on a farm, or even an extraordinary apple or turnip, but their fame is heralded through the land. Here we learn every legislative measure, from that which establishes a tariff to that which gives a pension-every election or appointment, from a president to a postmaster-the state of the market, the crops, and the weather. Not a snow is suffered to fall, or a very hot or very cold day to appear, without being recorded. We may here learn what every man in every city pays for his loaf or his beefsteak, and what he gives, in fact, for almost all he eats, drinks, and wears. Here, deaths and marriages, crimes and follies, fashions and amusements, exhibit the busy, ever-changing drama of human life. Here, too, we meet with the speculations of wisdom and science, the effusions of sentiment, and the sallies of wit; and it is not too much to say, that the jest that has been uttered in Boston or Louisville, is, in little more than a week, repeated in every town in the United States or that the wisdom or the pleasantry, the ribaldry, or the coarseness, exhibited in one of the halls of congress, is made by the periodical press to give pleasure or distaste to 100,000 readers.

"Nor is its agency limited to our own concerns. It has eyes to see, and ears to hear, all that is said and done in every part of the globe--and the most secluded hermit, if he only take a newspaper, sees, as in a telescope, and often as in a mirror, every thing that is transacted in the most distant regions; nor can any thing memorable befall any considerable part of our species, that it is not forthwith communicated, with the speed of steam, to the whole civilised world.

"The newspaper press is thus a most potent engine, both for good and evil. It too often ministers to some of our worst passions, and lends new force to party intolerance and party injustice.

'Incenditque animum dictis, atque aggeratiras.'

"But its benefits are incalculably greater. By communicating all that is passing in the bustling world around us, whether it be little or great, virtue or crime, useful or pernicious, pleasurable or painful, without those exaggerations and forced congruities which we meet with in other forms of literature, it imparts much of the same just knowledge of men and things as experience and observation. Its novelties give zest to life. It affords occupation to the idle, and recreation to the industrious. It saves one man from torpor, and relieves another from care. Even in its errors, it unconsciously renders a homage to virtue, by imputing guilt to those it attacks, and praising none to whom it does not impute merit and moral excellence. Let us hope that it will, in time, without losing any of its usefulness, less often offend against good taste and good manners, and show more fairness in political controversy.

"According to the census of 1840, there were then in the United States 138 daily newspapers, 1142 issued weekly, and 125 twice or thrice a week, besides 227 other periodical publications."—Professor Tucker's Progress of Population, &c.

DISTRIBUTION OF THE INDUSTRIOUS CLASSES.

In 1820, for the first time, the census enumerated the number of persons who were severally employed in agriculture, commerce, and manufactures. In the succeeding census, no notice was taken of the occupations of the people; but that of 1840 gave a fuller enumeration of the industrious classes, distinguishing them under the several heads of mining, agriculture, commerce, manufactures, navigating the ocean, internal navigation, and the learned professions. The result of each census is given in the following tables :--

TABLE I.-Showing the Number of Persons engaged in Agriculture, Commerce, and Manufactures in the several States, according to the Census of 1820.

Total....

15,203 3,717,756| 117,575|791,545 56,025 33,067 65,236 20,797 1919 2056 2707 5024 4329 10,179 9771892 2093 833 41

The number of persons employed in agriculture, is

1 out of

Taking all the employments together, the number employed is 355 in every 1000 of the whole population: there is but a very small proportion of males who are not occupied in some mode of profitable industry.

TABLE V.-Comparative View of the Number of Persons employed in Agriculture, Commerce, and Manufactures, in the Five Great Divisions of the United States, in 1820 and 1840, and the Relative Proportions of each Class.

TABLE VI.-Showing the Proportions in which the several Industrious Classes of the Union, according to the Census of 1840, are distributed among its great Geographical Divisions.

22,315

37,119
144,690 1,057,910

364,321

88.5

1.3

10.2

842

2.2

13.6

72,493
1820 2,070,646
349,506 2,483,645
1840, 3,719,951 117,607 791,749 4,629,307 80.4

83 4

2.9

13.7

2.5

17.1

TABLE VII.— Showing the Ratio which the Number of Persons in the several Industrious Classes of each great Geographical Division of the States bears to the whole Population of such Division, according to the Census of 1840.

The whole number of persons employed in agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, bears nearly the same proportion to the whole in both enumerations: being in each, about 28 per cent a large proportion, when it is considered that only a very small number of females are so employed; and that one-half, or very nearly half of the males, are under seventeen years of age.

In comparing the numbers employed in the United States, with those employed of the inhabitants of Great Britain, it will be necessary to deduct, according to Professor Tucker," from the whole number returned by the census of 1840, the slaves comprehended under that class, the free coloured persons, the white females, the white males under

twenty years of age, and the professional men, for none of which deductions, except the last, have we any data at once precise and authentic."

The result, made out by the Professor, is as follows :—
In all the departments of industry

Deduct, for two-fifths of the coloured population

persons 4,798,870 1,149,598

the white females employed in manufactures
white males under 20 years of
professional men

54,806

age

575,519

65,255

1,845,178

The whole number of white males above 20 years of age, employed
in trade and manual labour

2,953,692

Professor Tucker observes, "Whilst all civilised countries are so much alike as to the amount of labour put in requisition to satisfy human wants, they differ very greatly as to the distribution of that labour among the three principal branches of industry; and the difference is very great in this respect, not only between the several states, but in the whole United States, in 1820 and 1840. The proportion of labour employed in agriculture and commerce had diminished; while that employed in manufactures had, in twenty years, increased from 13.7 per cent to 17.1 per cent of the whole. The positive increase in that time, was from 349,506 persons employed in 1820, to 791,749 employed in 1840.

"This increase was greatest in the New England states, whose manufacturing popu lation had enlarged from 21 per cent in 1820, to 30.2 per cent, in 1840; in which time the same class of population had nearly trebled in Massachusetts, and more than trebled in Rhode Island. In the south-western states, alone, the proportion of agriculture had increased; in all the others it had diminished. In the middle and north-western, the proportion employed in commerce experienced a small increase. In several of the states, not only was the proportion less in 1840 than it had been in 1820, but the number of persons actually employed in commerce was less. This was the case in Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, and, to a smaller extent, in Delaware, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Is this falling-off to be attributed solely to the loss of our legitimate share of the West India trade since 1830, or in part, also, to some difference in the mode of taking the census, by which a part of the seamen, who, in 1840, were separately numbered, were, in 1820, reckoned among the persons employed in commerce ?

age,

"If the whole labour of Great Britain is distributed among the several departments of industry in the same proportions as the labour of the males above twenty years of in that country, agricultural labour is but 31.5 per cent of the whole; here, it is 77.5 per cent. In that country, manufactures and trade employ 28.8 per cent of the whole labour; here, they employ but 18.9 per cent. Each country employs its industry in that way which is most profitable, and best suited to its circumstances.

"Two-thirds of the mining labour is in the middle and southern states. The southern states stand foremost in agricultural labour, though they hold but the third rank in population. The middle states employ the least labour in agriculture, in proportion to their numbers. In commerce, however, they employ the most, and next to them the New England States. The same two divisions take the lead in manufactures, they contributing nearly two-thirds of the labour employed in this branch of industry. Three-fourths of the seamen are furnished by New England, of which nine-tenths belong to Massachusetts and Maine. More than half the labour employed in inland navigation is in the middle states, and, next to them, are the north-western states.

"Of that department of industry which comprehends the learned professions, and which is at once the best fruit of civilisation, and the most powerful agent of its further advancement, the New England and middle states have the largest proportion, though there is less diversity in this than in the other industrious classes."

New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, employ the greatest number in mining; in agriculture, New York, Virginia, and Ohio; in commerce, New York, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Massachusetts; in navigating the ocean, New York ranks next to Massachusetts and Maine. In internal navigation, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Virginia, give occupation to 20,000 out of about 30,000 employed.