“It is not my purpose to go into an extended notice of the errors in the statistics connected with the census of 1840. A few examples will serve to show their character and extent. In the article of hemp, Ohio is stated to produce 9,080 tons, and Indiana 8,605—either equal nearly to the product of Kentucky, which is reported at 9,992 tons, and almost equal, when united, to Missouri, to which 18,010 tons are given as the aggregate. Virginia is stated to raise 25,594 tons, almost equal to both Kentucky and Missouri, which are given as above at 28,002 tons. Now the indisputable fact is, that Kentucky and Missouri produce more hemp than all the rest of the United States, and ten times as much as either Ohio, Indiana, or Virginia, which three States are made to raise 50 per centum more than those two great hemp-producing States.
“The sugar of Louisiana is given at 119,947,720 lbs., equal to 120,000 hhds.., 160 per cent. more than has been published in New Orleans, as the highest product of the five consecutive years, including and preceding 1840.
“But what is this to the wholesale figure-dealing which returns 3,160,949 tons of hay, as the product of New York for that article! a quantity sufficient to winter all the horses and mules in the United States.
“Other errors of great magnitude might be pointed out; such as making the tobacco product of Virginia 11,000 hhds.., when her inspection records show 55,000 hhds.., thrown into market as the crop of that year. Who believes that 12,233 lbs. pitch, rosin and turpentine, or the tenth part of that quantity, were manufactured in Louisiana in 1840, or that New York produced 10,093,991 lbs. maple-sugar in a single year, or twenty such statements equally absurd, which I might take from the returns?”
Mr. Cist will find in the appendix to Dr. Jackson’s Final Report on the Geology of New Hampshire, a statement, that Vermont makes 6,000,000 pounds of sugar annually. If this be so, we may, without extravagance, suppose that New York reaches 10,000,000 lbs. So far as we have collateral means of judging, the amount of maple-sugar is under-stated in the census of 1840.
[9] Appendix to final Report on the Geology and Mineralogy of New Hampshire, page 361. This admirable Report is an able exposition of the benefit of public State surveys.
[10] If those who drink whisky would pour it on to the sugar in the refining cones, instead of upon sugar in tumblers, it would refine them as much as it does the sugar; performing two valuable processes at once.