The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-07-09
PROGRESS OF THE NATION.

From the NJ Y. Tribune.
The approach of the ninth national census
may well excite solicitude concerning the ex-
tent to which its results will be affected by
the extraordinary causes that have distracted
the country during one-half of the current
decade. The effects of such war as we have
encountered including the premature loss of
nearly million of men, may well be expected
to affect the ratio of comparison with the
enumerations of other decades, past and pro-
spective. Yet such is the steady effect of
emigration and other recuperating causes,
that the drawbacks, however mighty they
seem in comparison with any former Difficult
ties, will probably leave much fainter effects
on the census than many of us have at times
anticipated.
1t is not very wonderful that Americans
should become believers in manifest des-
tiny" when thinking of the progress of their
country during the brief period of our ma
tional existence. How can it be otherwise,
when recollecting that the four-score years
since the original rickety Confederacy of ill
ointed States was merged in a national Gov
ernment under the present Constitution,
have been signalized by increase of States
from thirteen to thirty-seven, with territory
enough to make out fifty noble common
wealths ere this century ends; with popula-
ton, forty millions now, that will probably
be expanded to a round hundred millions be-
from the original narrow strip along the At
lantic coast into mighty empire, stretching
three thousand miles across the continent to
the Pacific Ocean, and upward from the
Mexican Gulf to the Northern lakes and the
arctic regions of Alaska?
Nearly fifty thousand miles of railroad have
brought all sections of the Union into quicker
communion than existed between Boston and
| Washington when the present National Con-
stitution was established, while more than a
hundred and fifty thousand miles of telegraph
| enable widely separated States and people to
! interchange intelligence more rapidly than
| could have been done thirty years ago between
| the towns of single county, the news from
all parts of the nation now appearing as
promptly in our daily papers as the ''local
items" from the different wards OF the city
The means thus effective in satisfying the
wants and promoting the comforts of social
and civil life are equally efficacious for ma
tional defense-the movement OF armies
across our vast regions being regulated and
facilitated by the locomotive and the light
nine-and all danger of invasion being
ayerted by the fact that the telegraphs and
the railroads enable us promptly to concen-
trate volunteers enough to oVerwhelm all
the armies which the world could send
AGAINST our national Union. What vlstas OF
national greatness burst upon the mind
when contemplating the future by the
usual rate of increase, the population of our
country, estimated at forty-two millions IN IN
1870 6ftv-six millions in 1880, seventy
seven millions in 1890, and a
hundred millions in 1900 will
probably exceed three hundred millions IN
l940-seventy years from the present Ilnienl IA
period that will be reached by many oil the
Children now in our schools And yet the
National Union would not the then &C contain, %maS
proportionately, more than hall as s..dnr"al mucl
population as Massachusetts, now possesses;
since the whole Union, if peopled like that
State in the ratio of acres, wonld contain
over six hundred millions. Wlth the con-
sciousness that we possess more than three
and half millions of square miles OF lana
or about twenty-five hundred millions OF
acres, or nearly an acre for every dollar OF
national debt; and with the probability thai
the lapse of twenty-five years will nearly
treble the number of our present population
who can despair of the Republic, or of its
means to repay, in reasonable time, every
dollar of the debt incurred for preserving oul
|. National Union ?