The southern press., 1850-11-04

ioIt anu greatness OF people are measured Dy
! what they enjoy and what they accomplish, and
that therefore life is more desirable in cities than
in the country, even at discount OH the latter
OF onc-third, But even this theory, bold as it
Is, does not go far enough, for unforiunaly in
cites the mortality is as great among children rs
adults. Perhaps if the point had been suggested
TO our philosopher, his "thorough discipline"
would have been ready to show that children
were superuous! or as repuguant as longevity
to high state of civilization.
Indeed, the Massachusetts, system does prac-
tcally repudiate the natural and old-fashioned
practice OF providing and preserving population
| by marriage and by healthful employment, since
she dooms a majority of her people to protracted
celibacy aud to life-destroying pursuits, and
relies on the Importation Of people ready grown
from Europe, and then boasts, as in her last
Boston census, of the large proportion of her
producing population 1t is high time some
new philosophy were invented to explain the
philanthropy of this system, lest from the preju-
dices of old-fashioned Southern people they
should regard il as abomnable and "inhunan"
1t IS evident Justice" has not yet progressed MS
far this theory, or that he is afraid il is not
yet adapted to the latitude of Kentucky, so he
denies the facts that compelled his friend Mussey
to bring it forth, and with unblushng charla-
tanry cites the British registrations as suili-
cient fully to refute" them, when, as | have
proved, the registrations completely fortify all j
had said McCulloch tells us (vol. 2, p. 542)
that "when one person in one hundred dies
| Annually, two at the least are constantly sick" I"
The mortality of New York is about double
that of the rural population; consequently there
are two deaths to one hundred where there
ought to be one, and four constantly sick in
stead of two. Hence there is an excess of con-
slant sickness in that city of one hundred per
cent. over the country. And MS the sick, instead
of producing anything, consume mt least half OF
what in health they would produce, and more
| than they would consume in cost if not in guam.
tity, it will perhaps not be too much to say that
in such city there is an annual deficit Of two
and half per cent of its production owing to
sickness alone Add to this the expenses and
losses attending extraordinary mortality, and
we shall have more than one-half thus sunk of
the ordinary annual accumulations of the same
people residing In the country, and yet " Justice"
sneers at the effect of mortality on the accumu-
lation of wealth!
hope | will not be suspected, in thus pre-
senting the effect of disease and death in cities
on the accumulation Of wealth, of overlooking
the anguish and misery they produce, which are
beyond the power of language or figures to ex-
press and enough in any comparison of the
condition Of communities, or the effect of insti-
tutions, to overwhelm all temporal considera-
tons whatever, Nor am | to be understood rs
denying the utility Of commerce and manufac-
lures or of towns. | only lament the disastrous
tendency TO erceSS in them all among modern
civilized States, where there is no institution
like African slavery to counteract that tendency
Both would be profitable with n less amount of
capital and Il less number Of persons engaged in
them.
Unjust not be imagined that, in a comparison
between agricultural, and commercial or manu-
featuring people, the first have any original
superiority of capital or wealth. When our
fathers landed Oh these shores, the land was as
common to all Us air or water. 1t had no price
One man determined to apply his skill and labor
to its cultivation, and thus to appropriate its
pro .uctive power; another to plow the sea and
to employ its winds and waves to effect through
his enterprise an exchange of the objects OF
human desire another resorted to the water
fall or to the coal-feld, and seized its physical
power to change the forms instead of changing
the places, rs in commerce, or multiplying the
number, rs in agriculture, of the materials to
feed, to clothe, or to please mankind. Each
was actuated by his own notions of proiit, for
each might with equal facility have adopted the
pursuits of the others.
1t avails nothing IN This argument to descant
on the great advantages conferred on agriculture
by commerce and manufactures-the reply to
that is, that agriculture confers at least equal
benefits, and in fact much greater on the others
The agriculture of the South, the cultivation Of
cotton for instance, has done as much as any
other agriculture for commerce and manufac-
lures, and quite as much us they have done
for it,
I'M yf 70
straton of the more equal distribution of prop
erty in the South than the North. He says that
as to Virginia, the conclusion that two-thirds off
her males above twenty-one are freeholdtrs or
householders, results from san absurd conjecture
and a false assumption" The absurd conjec-
ture is, that 'in Virginia, limited as is their right
of franchise, and consequently high as it is
priced, about erery tenth roter Staid aoay from
The oolls during the holly contested Presidential
election Of 1914" Now the Presidential cleo
tion of lS44 was mol hotly~ contested in Vir-
ginia. Neither party doubted how her vote
would be given. At least never saw any esti-
mate in any paper of either party that she would
vote contrary to what she did vote; and the
majority she did give was very large, so that
there was nothing in Virginia to bring out full
vote. 1t is Justice" therefore, that makes n
false assumption to sustain a false charge And
t!lc eleClNe lraDcnlSe lnere Is limited
and is respected, yet as Virginia is, as Justice"
says, State Of great area, and the voters have
far to travel to the polls, and have only 10000
carriages to travel in, it is quite reasonable to
estimate that 10000 of her voters did not attend
on that occasion. On the contrary, the estimate
in the lecture, instead Of being too favorable to
Virginia is not near enough so. In the year
1929 the auditors report showed that there were
then $4,000 treehOiderS alone, leaving out all
who held tracts of less than twenty-five acres,
except town lots And oh tell it not in Boston
that in Eastern Virginia where slaves the most
abound, so also do freehoders! In 1880 there
were only about $4,000 white males above
twenty. .one. Now after leaving out the widow
and minor frceholders and allowing for those
holding less than twenty-five acres, of whom
there must have been many particularly near the
towns, there would remain al least t,oo-thirds of
the white males above twenty.one who were
to say nothing of easeholders, &c.
And as there was no great revolution in Virginia
between 1880 and 1874, unless it was, according
TO Justice" the removal of the poor whites