THE LEAL LAND. BY JOHN C. M'CABE. The leal land! the leal land!-how beautiful it seems, 'Tis sweet to contemplate that place where sorrow comes no more, The leal land! the leal land!-I see its rich green hills, The leal land! the leal land!-shall we know each other there How blessed is the holy thought-as o'er their graves we bend, The leal land! the leal land!-where blessed spirits rest: Then, blessed home of wearied ones, amid your peaceful bowers, STATISTICS OF THE UNITED STATES.* Few works contain more valuable information than those on statistics. If full and accurate, they are highly useful to the general reader, as well as to the statesman; and it is not possible, without them, to form any correct judgment of the true power, progress and resources of a nation. They furnish, also, the safest materials for a comparison between the greatness of different nations, at different periods, no less than the greatness of the same country, under those peaceful changes in forms of government and industry which, in modern times, often cause more important revolutions than conquests or rebellions. Our object, on the present occasion, is not so much to review, with minuteness, either of the works whose titles are prefixed to the present article, as to offer a few considerations connected with some of those topics which constitute the subject matter of them, and which considerations may tend to throw additional light on the astonishing developements in this country, of the energies and prosperity, if not superiority, of democratic institutions. At all events, the Statistical History of the United States, since the establishment of their free constitutions, exhibits a progress in all the substantial elements of national grandeur which is believed to have had scarce a parallel in the annals of mankind. Such considerations, when fairly deduced from facts well authenticated, contain the essence of works like those we are now reviewing. In the volumes of Mr. McCulloch are some valuable additions to what he had before given to the world in his Commercial Dictionary, so far as regards Great Britain alone. But the petition of Professor Leiber merely describes the outline of numerous statistical inquiries, concerning the United States, which have not yet been completed by him, but which he proposes to undertake, if Congress will assist with its patronage. In certain branches of those inquiries, he has been ably preceded in this country by Seybert and Pitkin. The Professor, however, contemplates a much wider range than has yet been pursued by any one writer among us, and which, with all his German industry, and such examples, or guides, before him, abroad, as Hassel, Dupen, Colquon and McCulloch, with any aid which Congress has ever been willing to bestow on such subjects, would require laborious years to finish. A department of Government like that in France for the interior, or that formerly proposed 1. Professor Francis Leiber's memorial to Congress, relative to a work on the Statistics of the United States, printed by the Senate, April 18, 1836. 2. J. K. McCulloch's Statistical Account of the British Empire, in two volumes, octavo, published in London, 1837. in this country to be called the Home or Domestic Department, would, as suggested in a note to Mr. Woodbury's Historical Discourse, alone appear to be competent to prosecute with success so extensive and complicated an undertaking. But, however such details, almost infinite as they are in their various ramifications, may ever be completed, or under what auspices, or by whom, it is at best a dry, though in some respects very useful, task. The intellect and judgment are chiefly to be employed in the subsequent use of such materials. In another view of works similar to that proposed by Mr. Leiber, concerning the United States, it may be deemed almost as unprofitable as it is tedious, to collect tabular details and estimates like those in Pitkin and Seybert, and the continuation of portions of them by Watterston and Van Zandt; or like Warden's and Darby's, in a form less beneficial to researches into political economy; or like Blodget's, Smith's, Cox's, and others of an earlier date, and with less accuracy, unless accompanied, as in some of the above cases, by suitable comparisons and useful inferences; or unless some person takes the trouble, in connection with them, or afterwards, to institute proper inquiries into the causes and consequences of striking statistical changes. To present the figures in juxta-position, and in contrast, which exhibit the population, trade, the arts, the currency, and other important points of research, as they existed at different periods in the history of a country, is the first beneficial step after the mere collection of detached or consecutive data. But, beside that, the great causes which expedited or retarded, and which illustrate or render obscure the various statistical differences that appear, must, if possible, be next eviscerated and explained. These demonstrate the practical benefit of the whole. They constitute their true philosophy, and furnish aids to the statesman, as well as political economist, which can be derived from no other source, and whose value, whether in reasoning or in action, is often incalculable. Hence, one such work as that of Sir John Sinclair on the Public Revenue of the British Empire, and which combines, compares and digests important statistics on a most interesting topic, and at distant periods, is more illustrative of the advance in society, whether in wealth, civilization or power, than half the other histories of England united. It comes home to men's business and bosoms. It traces revolutions in forms of government, as well as in dynasties, often to their true causes; to their influences on the people at large, in the imposition of, or relief from, unnecessary taxation; in the ruinous extravagance or healthy economy of the heads of the Government; in the commencement or abandonment of wars, both expensive and unnecessary; in the protection and encouragement, on the one hand, or the crippling restraints and depression, on the other, of great branches of industry; in the freedom and enterprize which have been secured and excited by their rulers to ope rate both at home and abroad; or in the neglect and indifference evinced to the prosperity of the community, and the true and durable glory of the nation, as a whole. Doctor Henry, in his History, by comparing the progress of Great Britain, at different epochs, on the same subject, has pursued a course somewhat similar, but less useful, as more general, and embracing more numerous topics, and often too much confined in his comparisons to periods not sufficiently distant from each other. For the United States-even since the adoption of the present Constitution-without exploring an earlier date, when our records were more imperfect, and our institutions of a less democratic character, a great deal remains to be ascertained and explained, as to some of the important changes in their statistical condition. Though this period is comparatively so brief, and, in respect to them as a nation, has been, during most of it, so quiet and peaceful, it has, at the same time, abounded in interest, and been characterized by the most unprecedented changes in territory, population, commerce, manufactures, internal improvements of all kinds, and almost every thing else intimately connected with fiscal resources and national power. What is the talisman which has wrought such political miracles? It can only be found in our democratic institutions. It must be the happy union of the supremacy of Liberty and Law which they inculcate. It is worthy of special notice, in examining the results of this pe riod in our history, that the whole of it has been a period of successful efforts at self-government by the whole people. It has been a period when their laws and constitution, and not those of any masters, near or remote, have controlled either their domestic or foreign policy; a period where measures and men have been changed, not to gratify personal ambition, the pride and pomp of monarchs, or the caprices of a few, but only to secure the greatest good to the greatest number of the whole population; to leave every species of industry, as far as possible, untaxed and unshackled; to yield protection equally to all, and confer monopolies on none; to stimulate every citizen, however humble, to exertion and enterprize; and to make the Government a blessing to all, by making all intelligent to understand, and moral to enforce, its wholesome provisions, and, where not wholesome, to change them peacefully, and in the legal and established modes pointed out by their free institutions. Pervading all and sustaining all, is what Thompson so justly describes as "the solid base of liberty-the liberty of mind." A brief retrospect of our progress since 1789, as shown by our statistical history, in a few important particulars, will illustrate very fully some of the consequences which have resulted from our happy position and principles. They will help to show how much our great commonwealth, unterrified and free, has (to use the ideas of Milton) spread its wings like a young eagle, opened its undazzled eye to the midday sun, and, soaring far aloft, "purged and unsealed her long abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms." We have already, in our last number, given some striking details of the progress of the Post Office Department, which as an index to the whole, may train the mind, to what it may expect from further comparisons of our National Statistics. First, The territory of the Union in 1789, on the most favourable construction of our limits, did not probably exceed about seven hundred thousand square miles, though some have estimated it at a million. Without conquest or violence, we have since, in less than half a century, added to this rich inheritance from our fathers, both Louisiana and the Floridas, embracing quite one million four hundred thousand more square miles, or treble our original territory. We have added to it new degrees of latitude and longitude, new products, immense rivers, fertile plains, new oceans and navigable outlets, for nearly half the former possessions of the United States. What visions of fertility, population and power have thus been opened for the future, where free institutions and intelligent, moral, civilized beings are to supplant the savage, and illustrate all the benefits and glories of democratic principles from the Mississippi to the Pacific. The capacities of the United States in this respect, as compared with other countries, will be the more conspicuous, when, without enlarging on the productiveness of our soil, the multitude and size of our streams, our numerous inland seas, extended coasts, and varieties of climate, it is seen that our territory now exceeds in extent any within the limits of Europe, which belongs to any one government. Indeed, it is larger than three fourths of Europe itself, equals one twentieth of the habitable part of the earth, and is surpassed in the world by only three or four governments, and they holding but feeble and limited control over most of their distant dominions. When our vast and fertile regions are filled up with a population at all equal in numbers to their capacity for sustaining them, or which shall approximate to the one, two, and three hundred per square miles in several countries of Europe and Asia, some faint idea may be formed of the destinies which probably await it. At only eighty-five persons per square mile, which is but about one-half of the present ratio in England, and one-third of that in Holland, and near that of Massachussetts, our whole numbers would exceed two hundred millions, or one-fourth of the present estimated population of the globe. Second, To cultivate and progress our territory, we actually had fifty years since, a population short of four millions. This has since enlarged by such an astonishing increase that it is thought the coming census will embrace above sixteen millions. While many other countries are retrograde or stationary in numbers, and several of the most civilized double not oftener than once in a century, ours has more than quadrupled in less than half a century. Some of |