Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1845-03-29
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER.
NOTES ON NEW BOOKS.


and wealth in fifty years, as exhibited by the de-
cennial census. BY GEORGE TUCKER Professor
of Moral Philosophy and Political Economy in
the University of Virginia." &C. Nep York,
press of Hunts Merchants Magazine. PhiladeL
phid, Cary g. Hart. Washington, Franck Taylor
We have here the scattered, unreasoned facts,
which our periodic enumeratons of our people and
OF their empoymens present, reduced to order, TO
system, and the main results 10 which they
duct one skiltully deduced. Without such book,
our census of every period is mere chaos not of
void, but OF confusion, where the elements of every
thing are found but nothing in its final form. Here
we have, in tangible shape, not institutions, but
those things of which institutions but the in
struments. Here may see law, peace, intelli-
gence, morality industry, reduced regularly enough
10 arithmetic, and Government and legislation brought
down To diagram.
Besides the solution of many of those problems
in mere wealth and numbers which all would of
course expect from such an inquiry, Prof TUCKER
has not failed to investigate many other important
questions, as TO which conclusions more less po-
sitve could be arrived at, by analysis of the
census. Among these are the probabilities of life
in this country, the proportion between the sexes,
emigration, and some of its physical and economical
effects, the dversities between the two of our
population. the progress of slavery and the proba-
bilities of its exnguishment, the advances Of pro-
ductve industry. Nor has he neglected, while thus
surveying all the great elements of our prosperity
and presenting whatever it has accomplishments
resources, public and private-to demonstrate the
amplitude, the exuberance of the means which the
States possess for paying their debts so that he
has, in manner particularly decisive, taken away
the only excuse for the shameful doctrine OF repu
diation TO which could any where listen with
the smallest patience.
Recurring to the subject of. the frequency of
mental disease among the negro in cold climates
as so curiously deduced from the census tables by
Mr.. TUCKER in former publications to which we have
adverted, we find that after all, he has not been
answered: there is general fact which the alega
ton of errors in particular returns cannot overthrow
If his tables pages IL IS, 70 of the comparative
numbers of the insane, white and black in the diff
feren States be examined, il will be seen that there
is uniformity in the results not to be accounted
for by casual negligence. Grant even what is most
probable that in the slave States the number of in
sane blacks exhibited is much below the truth, and
that it may approach to equality with the cases
of such disease among the other race-still, how
are you to explain away, not omission, but positive
data of an opposite character, displaying vastly
increased proportion of insanity among the blacks
OF all the free States, and this in nearly regular
ratio as you 90 North Observe the facts In
Maine, the census shows black in Ia to be insane
in New Hampshire, in %; in Vermont, in Sc !;
IN Massachusetts, in 43 in Rhode Island, in
249; in Connecticut. in 1874; in New York. in
257 in New Jersey, in 297; in Pennsylvania,
] in 256; in Delaware, ! in 697 in Maryland,
in l,005; in Virginia, l i'll ,289 and so on, to a
still smaller proportion in the far Southern States
Then, travelling back by the West, Tennessee, in
l,240; Kentucky, in 1853: Missouri, in $40 !;
Ohio, in los; Indiana, in o. Illinois, in 40 :;
Michigan, n27; Wisconsin, / in 65 Iowa, in
AZ. Now, there is here too much and too wide
consistency for error. How comes such uni
formity of Measurements We can account for an
under-statement to the South but over-state-
ment every where else admits no explanation
"Elements Of Universal History, on new and
systematic plan; from the earliest times to the
Treaty Of Vienna. To which is added, a summa-
sry of The leading events since that period. BY III.
WHITE, b. A. Trim. Coll Cambridge. With adj |
diions by JOHN S. HART A. NJ, Principal of the |
Philadelphia High School, &c. &c. Philadelphia,
Lea & Blanchard. 1914" limo. 525 PIP.
A good book, so far as book can be good which
belongs to bad class of mistaken design, il-apped
to the purpose for which they chiefly used, and
capable of but limited utility that parti-
cuar use in knowledge for which alone they fit.
"A big book saith Pliny, /" is great evil !"
that severe sentence itself forming, meanwhile, part
of one Of the most vouminous faragos ever written
This is like those rhetoricians who have acclaimed
against Eloquence or like the philosophers that
have written against the Love of Fame and set their
names to the work il is like Epimenides of
Crete's leaving behind him dstich in which he
pronounceth that no Cretan can tell the truth; or
like Lord Byrons asserting that every poet is liar;
or the treatise of Abertus the Great (who won
that title by his writings on Mechanics and Physics,
and who left behind him deal of stuff about Asro-
logy) on !" the Vanity Of the Sciences" Nay, may
we not liken il to the wise Solomon, who solemnly
concludes land it may be true in religious sense)
that knowledge and every thing else Of human is
but vanity and vexation Of spirit" Would he,
TOO, have preferred to be fool
But, as for books, though to measure their worth
by their shortness may be very convenient me-
thod, it can hardly be very one since, upon
that plan, the ballads of Goody Two-Shoes are bet
ter than the Had, and the history Of Tom Thumb
quite another thing to those of Thucydides or Lvy.
Perhaps, after all, the best way, the only sure
way of rightly abridgng, is that which the reader
should learn to do, where the author has not; we
mean the art of skipping in book whatever he who
peruseh it hath no need to follow out-what the
writer should have left ont, or what others had said
well before him, or what the particular reader
every body not the author himself knows. BY
this art most books, and especially most modern
ones, may be made TO shrink amazingly.
With all this, Montague is certainly las is his
practice) wise, when he says, Tout abrege sur un
bon livre est un sot abrege.' Every abridgment
of book worth reading is foolish abrdgment' y
That before us does not exactly come within this
Judgment; for il is not the abridgment Of any part-
c,,lor booE Rt IA is none the less fas II sepms In