land taken into cultivation, the acres in each of the crops and in pastures, the value of the farm and of its implements and machinery. Under division 4 the number of each description of live stock. Column 5 will show any mills in use on the farm. Column 6, all persons over 12 years of age actually employed on the farm. Column 7, blank on a slave interest. 8 to include bushels, pounds, &c. of each of the following articles, or any others, (dispensing with hhds., tons and bales, which lead to confusion and incompleteness, as experience has shown,) wheat, rye, corn, oats, rice, tobacco, cotton, wool, peas and beans, Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, barley, buckwheat, fruit, wine, market gardens, butter, cheese, hay, clover, other grass seed, hops, hemp-dew and water-rotted, flax, flax-seed, silk cocoons, sugar cane or maple, molasses, beeswax and honey, home-made manufactures, &c.

There is no greater propriety in ruling out separate columns for each agricultural product or article of live stock, than in having such columns for the articles of raw material used, or of annual products in the manufacturing schedule. There were no such columns in that schedule, and aggregates from the returns are as simple and as easily comprehended without them. All that is necessary is to print at the head of the schedules a list of such articles as the enumerators will be instructed to call over. A great many columns will increase the space to be occupied, and increase also the chances of error by making it more probable that facts will fall out of their proper division. Not one man in fifty will furnish an entry for half of the blanks in the present agricultural schedule.*

These schedules include all that at present require six, excepting only the valuation of real and personal estate, the amount of taxes, the cost of pauperism, and the average crop per acre; facts which an intelligent superintendent could procure easily from the State reports or from correspondence with the county officers, as has been done before with but little expense. The schools, colleges, &c., and their means of support, can all be obtained when the schoolmaster is called upon for enumeration, or when the school or college is visited. The entries may be made upon the back of the returns. If a private teacher, and not a school teacher, the fact should be stated. Facts for churches can be obtained when the clergyman is called upon, as also for Sunday school scholars and libraries. Those for newspapers and periodicals, together with a copy of the paper, on calling upon the editor: from librarians obtain the number of volumes. Particulars are thus obtained for the British census and the difficulties which present themselves, (such as a clergyman with several churches or a church with several clergymen, &c.,) can be easily obviated by careful and well digested instructions. "Public paupers" and " criminals," are all in schedule 1, and arranged much better. The "cost of labor" "Seasons," etc., are in schedule 2.

But however perfect may be the schedules of a census, if a corresponding perfection is not found in the machinery for taking it in the field, and for aggregating and combining it, and deducing the results in the office, little advantage will be gained upon the score of accuracy or of sound science. These two subjects, therefore-the enumerators and collators, will receive a moment's attention.

THE ENUMERATORS. The persons who have been entrusted with the work in the United States at every census, have been, in general, found (so low was the rate of compensation,) among those who were willing to undertake it, rather than among those who would have been selected for their especial fitness. Political service has also entered into the element of qualification. That the latter should have great weight, is not surprising, considering how the appointments are provided for, but so ample was the remuneration in 1850 that capacity might well have been secured. An examination of the returns and the correspondence of the office will

* Americans resident abroad should be ascertained through the State Department. Circumstances giving a temporary enlargement to the population of a neighborhood, such as the construction of a rail road, canal, etc. ought also to be noted. In many of the old and thickly settled States, the English plan of enumeration in a single day, and by means of householder's schedules, left in advance to be filled up by heads of families, on the day preceding the census is practicable, and recommends itself for accuracy and perhaps for economy. The time is very far off, it is feared, when it can be applied with any advantage for the general census throughout all the States and Territories of the Union.

show that capacity was as often the exception as the rule. It would be better to entrust the work to the regular officers of cach county, employed by them for assessments and taxation purposes, or in general, for taking the census as will be seen hereafter, provided for by local authority. There are no counties without such officers, and it may be safely assumed that if not always among the most educated, they will at least have the advantage of some previous familiarity with the business upon which they are employed and recognize an accountability that may affect their future positions. If the fact however explained, that these persons are a part of the recognized tax machinery, might be supposed to interfere with their receiving correct returns, the recourse must then be had to a better system of appointments requiring proof of education and experience and some general knowledge of statistical investigations. In Great Britain the census has been entrusted to the overseers of the poor, the parochial school masters, or to the office of the Registrar-General and his subordinates, all of them permanent.

THE OFFICE. Unless there is machinery in advance at the seat of Government no census can ever be properly taken and published. There is a peculiar education required for these labors which neither comes from zeal or genius, but is the result only of experience. They are the most irksome and trying imaginable, requiring inexhaustible patience and endurance, and baffling almost every effort after accuracy. Long familiarity can alone secure system, economy and certainty of result. This office machinery exists in all European countries where statistics are the most reliable, but there has been none of it in the United States. Each census has taken care of itself. Every ten years some one at Washington will enter the hall of a department, appoint fifty or a hundred persons under him, who, perhaps, have never compiled a table before, and are incapable of combining a column of figures correctly. Hundreds of thousands of pages of returns are placed in the hands of such persons to be digested. If any are qualified it is no merit of the system. In 1840 returns were given out by the job to whoever would take them. In 1850, such was the pressure of work, that almost any one could at times have had a desk. Contrast this with the English system and reflect that one individual, as hereafter remarked, presided over the census of 1801, '11, '21 and '31. In Washington, as soon as an office acquires familiarity with statistics, and is educated to accuracy and activity, it is disbanded, and even the best qualified employee is suffered to depart. The government may rely upon paying heavily for the experience which is being acquired. Even the head of the office, whatever his previous training, must expect, if faithful, to learn daily; and it is not going too far to say that a matter of one or two hundred thousand dollars is the difference between the amount which a census would cost, conducted by an office which has had the experience of a previous one, (even if partly or entirely in new hands, which might often be desirable, since the machinery, as in other offices, would be kept up,) and an office without such experience. This can be demonstrated if required. Half of that amount would sustain an office of several persons from census to census and defray all of the expenses of an annual or biennial report after the closing of the regular one, which itself would be executed with despatch, with greatly less force, and with a more economical and wiser application of labor. The permanent force would have no other interest than the prompt execution of the work.

The

The establishment of a regular statistical Office is therefore suggested, as a matter of economy, and essential to the proper execution of the census. In it would be collected-and they could be obtained without expense by exchange official statistical reports, upon any subject whatever, published by every city. town, county, or State in the Union, or in any other part of the world. absence of such documents in Washington was severely felt during the whole progress of the present census, although the former Superintendent obtained many by a visit to Europe, and others were subsequently sent by Mr. Vattemare, of Paris, and Mr. Hübner, of Berlin, and by the several states and cities which politely furnished such as were especially asked. All of this created labor and delay. The office ought also to be provided with a complete statistical library, and

with all the leading statistical journals in the world, together with maps, charts, &c. The returns of immigration and of foreign consuls could be sent to it, especially such as are in answer to circulars that were lately prepared in obedience to a call of Congress. A digest of such material, published annually or semi-annually, in a small and compact volume, would keep up the results of the general census to date, and shed no little light upon the industry and general and comparative wealth of the country. It would have charge of the manuscript volumes of every census, and respond to calls made by Congress in regard to them, or upon other kindred matters. Duties somewhat similar to these were performed by Mr. Porter for the English Government, and a Bureau of Statistics, as will be seen hereafter, exists in most of the European governments..

Such a bureau is recommended, also, in each of the States; and it would be the means of corresponding with the Central office, furnishing very much of the material to be aggregated by it. It has been proposed in South Carolina,* Rhode Island, Virginia, and Illinois, and was actually established in Louisiana,† but failed for the want of adequate legislation, after reports had been published upon about half of the parishes. The city of New York has such a bureau. In every State there are the materials for one with but little expense, if properly organized. The various local census, assessments of property and production, reports on

*A special committee of the legislature of South Carolina, in the session of 1848, after having ably shown in a variety of instances how little information existed in regard to the resources of that State, declare: "There are facts and considerations which, properly exhibited, would prove the necessity of providing some such organization as would lead to a correct understanding of these important matters; and the insufficiency of the matters here presented only serves to show conclusively that we have been heretofore neglectful of those means of information which are calculated to elicit correct apprehensions of our advantages and duties. The establishment of an efficient bureau of statistics will be the means of collecting and disseminating statistical information touching all the interests of the State, of the most valuable kind." The Governor, in his annual message to the legislature of the same State, says, "I recommend the careful collection of statistical information on all the branches of industry. By the possession of facts and materials, lucidly arranged and methodized, we shall be furnished with complete data as to the present state of the population, white and colored, their agriculture, commerce, navigation, manufactures, trade, finance, health, and indeed of whatever may be interesting or instructive."

The following Circular was prepared by the author of this Report and issued from the Bureau of Statistics of the State of Louisiana: with some modifications it will be applicable to any of the States.

1. Time of settlement of your parish or town; dates of oldest land grants; number and condition of first settlers; whence emigrating; other facts relating to settlements and history.

II. Indian names in your vicinity; what tribes originally; what relicts or monuments of them; if Indians still in what condition?

III. Biography, anecdotes, &c., of individuals distinguished in your vicinity in the past for ingenuity, enterprise, literature, talents, civil or military, &c.

IV. Topographical description of your parish, mountains, rivers, ponds, animals, quadrupeds, birds, fishes, reptiles, insects, &c., vegetable growths, rocks, minerals, sand clays, chalk, flint, marble, pit coals, figments, medicinal and poisonous substances, elevation above the sea, nature of surface, forests, or undergrowth, what wells and quality of well water, nature of coasts, does the water make inroads, mineral springs, caves, &c. V. Agricultural description of parish; former and present state of cultivation; changes taking place; introduction of cotton, sugar, rice, indigo, tobacco, grains, fruits, wines, &c., &c.; present 'products; lands occupied and unoccupied, and character of soil; value of lands; state of improvements; value of agricultural products; horses, cattle, mules, hogs, and whence supplied; profits of agriculture, prices of products; new estates opening; improvements suggested in cultivation and new growths; improvements in communication, roads, bridges, canals, &c.; kind and quantity of timber; fuel, &c.; state of the roads, summer and winter; kind of enclosures, and of what timber; manures; natural and artificial pastures; agricultural implements used; fruit trees, vines and orchards; modes of transportation; extent of internal navigation; levées, &c.; modes of cultivating and manufacturing sugar in use.

VI. Instances of longevity and fecundity; observations on diseases in your section; localities, healthful or otherwise; statistics of diseases; deaths; summer seats, &c.

VII. Population of your parish; increase and progress, distinguishing white and black; Spanish, French, American or German origin; foreigners, classes of population; number in towns; growth of towns and villages, &c.; condition, employment, ages; comparative value of free and slave labor; comparative tables of increase; marriages, births, &c.; meteorological tables of temperature, weather, rains, &c.

VIII. Education and Religion.-Advantages of schools, colleges, libraries enjoyed; proportion educated at home and abroad; expense of education; school returns; curches or chapels in parish, when and by whom erected; how supplied with clergy; how supported and attended, oldest interments; church vaults, &c. IX. Products in Manufactures and the Arts.-Kinds of manufactures in parish; persons employed; kind of power; capital; wages; per centum profit; raw material; sugar and cotton; machinery and improvements; kind and value; manufacturing sites, &c.

X. Commercial Statistics.-Value of the imports and exports of the State with each of the other States of the Union, as far as any approximation may be made, or data given; growth and condition of towns; increase in towns, &c.

XI. General Statistics.-Embracing banking, rail roads, insurances, navigation, intercommunication; learned and scientific societies; crime, pauperism, charities, public and benevolent institutions; militia, newspapers, &c.; application of parish taxes; expenses of roads, levees, &c.; number of suits decided in dif ferent courts; expenses and perfection of justice; number of parish officers, lawyers, physicians, &c.

XII. Date, extent, consequences, and other circumstances of droughts, freshets, whirlwinds, storms, lightnings, hurricanes, or other remarkable physical events, in your section, from remote periods; other meteorological phenomena; changes in climate, &c., &c.

XIII. Literary productions emanating from your neighborhood; your associations, if any; what manuscripts, publie or private records, letters, journals, &c., or rare old books, interesting in their relation to the history of the State, are possessed by individuals within your knowledgo.

XIV. Add any other matters of interest.

schools, asylums, penitentiaries, boards of health and commerce, furnish abundant details. Hundreds of other facts could be ascertained when the local assessments are made, with little if any more cost. The State and city census should be made to correspond, as far as possible, with the national, and be provided for at some intervening period. At present they are often taken in the same year, thus entailing a great waste of labor. The time is at hand when the several State governments should look to this matter; and as it was deemed important for European statisticians to meet in convention in order to bring about uniformity in their several systems, the States should also secure uniformity. A meeting of persons properly appointed by each, and fitted for the duties, would be the means of maturing some practical plan of co-operation.

In 1845 the subject of a statistical bureau was before Congress, and two very able and elaborate reports were made in its advocacy. A bill was introduced providing for the collection of material relating to all the great Industrial interests of the country to be published in an annual report by the Secretary of the Treasury, who was authorized to constitute an office of several persons for the purpose. The Secretary himself recommended that authority be given him to appoint a chief of the bureau with an appropriate salary, two assistants, and one clerk. "A statistical bureau," he says, "properly organized and supported, will be able to respond promptly and correctly to all calls by Congress for information on statistical subjects, save great waste of time and money, and furnish information highly interesting and useful to the great body of the people." The result of the movement, however, was a failure, in consequence of a single clerk only, with a small salary, being detached for the service.

What the agricultural department of the Patent Office is doing for agriculture, it is proposed that this office shall do for the great Industrial interests; gathering and combining their results, and developing them in connexion with the movement of population, and the growth or decline of cities and states.

Before closing these remarks, it will be proper to show what is now accomplished by the several foreign and State governments, as well as by the larger cities, in regard to statistical investigations. The information will be valuable, and has been obtained from official reports; and for our country, from replies made to circular letters directed to the Secretaries of State and leading geologists and statisticians in every part of the Union.

The decennial system of enumeration adopted in the United States has been imitated by Great Britain, beginning with the census of 1801. In Denmark a statistical central commission exists, which published eighteen large volumes of sta tistics between 1835 and 1849; subsequently ten volumes have been published by a central bureau. In Bavaria there is a statistical bureau. In Austria one was established in 1828, and besides the yearly statistics, there have been published in the last four years monthly and quarterly reports of foreign statistics, including the report of consuls. In France every ministry publishes its own statistics, though some have special bureaus. Those of Finance and Commerce have published thirteen volumes on finance, population, industry, &c. Individual effort is combined with official by establishing in every district statistical commissions which fill up the blanks, &c. To the commissions are assigned the reports on population, foundlings, beggars, &c. A census has been published every five years beginning with 1841. In Saxony a statistical bureau exists which has published three volumes. In Spain the census is rarely taken; M. Madoz prepared a Statistical and Geographical Dictionary of Spain in sixteen volumes by sending commissions into every part of the country. There are frequent statistical reports in relation to Cuba. In Sardinia, in 1820, a commission to collect statistics was established, with which thirty-seven juntas, of six members each, corresponded; four large volumes have been published. In Hollana a statistical bureau was established in 1826, which published several volumes A census was published in 1840; there is now no general bureau. In Wurtemburg a bureau has published thirty-three volumes. In Switzerland detailed reports have been received

since 1830 from nearly all the cantons. Zurich has a census of population made two hundred and twenty years ago. In Portugal there was a census in 1838, 1843, 1849, and 1851. In Russia there is a system of registration of births, &c., and occasionally a census has been ordered. In Sweden a board of table commission digests the returns of population supplied by the clergy. The census considers the people as having subsistence, or less or more than subsistence. In Norway there is a census by the magistrates in the towns, and rectors in the country; and inquiries extend to productions, occupations, deaf and dumb, &c. The Prussian census is taken every three years; that of 1849 gives ages, sex, faith, occupation, deaf and dumb, &c., education, schools, churches, asylums, dwellings, and families. There are lists of population in Prussia running back to 1748. In 1805 a statistical bureau, was established, and eleven volumes have been published by it, as, also, every fortnight a statistical journal. In Belgium the town and country population are distinguished; the sex, ages, married, widowed, occupation, faith, language, number of floors or parts of the house, gardens, protection against fire, degree of instruction, &c. The early population of England was in much dispute until Mr. Rickman, in 1836, addressed a letter to the clergy and obtained their returns as far back as 1570. The census of 1801, 1811, 1821, and 1831, were each superintended by Mr. Rickman, clerk of the House of Commons, and the business of the enumeration was conducted by the overseers of the poor in England and Wales, and the parochial schoolmasters in Scotland. In 1841 and 1851 the duty devolved upon the Registrar-General and his subordinates. The census was taken in one day, and in 1851 employed 38,740 persons as enumera

tors.

The first census of Great Britain included the sex, but not the age; also the number of houses and the occupations; the second made some improvements in the mode of recording the occupations; the third carried out the plan, but distinguished the ages quinquennially and decennially; the fourth effected important changes in the mode of ascertaining occupations, (a subject full of difficulty at all times,) calculated areas, &c.; the fifth embraced the general features of the sixth and last, which is worthy of minute consideration.

Of the sixth census of Great Britain, 1851, four bulky quarto volumes have been published by the Registrar-General, Major Graham, assisted by Dr. Farr and Horace Mann. Each of the fourteen divisions of the empire is prepared separately, and is illustrated by handsome district and county maps and other drawings, indexes, &c. The volumes include the number of the people, distinguishing male and female; the number of houses occupied, unoccupied, and building; the statistics of public worship, with a condensation of every previous census. In other volumes the ages of the population will be given, their birth-place, condition as regards marriage and occupation, the returns of schools, colleges, and other institutions; the number of blind, deaf and dumb, etc.

"The inquiries undertaken at the census of 1851 were of a far more extensive character than those pursued at any previous enumeration, for it was resolved to exhibit not only the statistics of parishes, and of parliamentary and municipal boroughs, but also of such other largo towns in England and Scotland as appeared sufficiently important for separate mention, and the statistics of all the ecclesiastical districts and new ecclesiastical parishes which, during the last forty years, had been created in England and Wales. In addition, also, to the inquiry concerning the occupation, age, and birth-place of the population, it was determined to ascertain various relationships, such as husband, wife, son, daughter, the civil condition, as married, unmarried, widower or widow, and the number of blind, or deaf and dumb. Moreover, the design was formed of collecting statistics as to the accommodation afforded by the various churches and other places of public worship throughout the country, and the number of persons generally frequenting them; also as to existing educational establishments, and the actual number of scholars under instruction.

The local machinery by which the objects thus contemplated were to be obtained, differed considerably in England and Scotland. In England and Wales the registration districts, which, for the most part, are conterminous with the unions, were made available for enumerating the population. Of these districts there were 624, each having a superintendent registrar; and these were divided into 2,190 sub-districts, each having a local registrar of births and deaths. Under the supervision of their 624 superintendents, the 2,190 registrars were directed to form their sub-districts into enumeration districts, according to certain instructions.