1701.1749.1775.
New England120,000385,000705,000
New York30,000100,000200,000
New Jersey15,00060,000120,000
Pennsylvania20,000200,000325,008
Delaware5,00025,00040,000
Maryland20,000100,000210,000
Virginia70,000250,000540,000
North Carolina20,00080,000260,000
South Carolina7,00050,000160,000
Georgia--10,00040,000
Total307,0001,260,0002,600,000

From 1750 to 1790 (Mr. Seaman states), the white population of the Southern Colonies or States increased faster than the same class in the Northern States, and about as fast from 1790 to 1800. But since that period the increase of whites has been greater in proportion in the Northern than in the Southern States.

In estimating the future progress of that part of the Continent of America within the boundaries of the United States, with reference to the march of population over the immense regions west of the Mississippi, it should be borne in mind that there is a large tract, of about one thousand miles in breadth, between the western boundaries of Missouri and Arkansas, and the Rocky Mountains, which is mostly uninhabitable for agricultural purposes, the soil being sterile, without timber, and badly watered. But the population flowing into California and Oregon, attracted by the rich mineral and agricultural resources of those extensive regions, leaves no doubt that our States on the Pacific will form a most important part of the Republic, and afford new fields for enterprise for many future years.

In taking the Seventh Census of the United States, there have been engaged 45 marshals, and 3231 assistants. The aggregate amount appropriated by Congress for the expenses was $1,267,500. On the 30th of September last there were employed in the Census-office ninety-one clerks, who in November were increased to one hundred and forty-eight.

The Immensity of the Universe!—How often has the grandeur of the conception been marred by the scientific puerilities that have been brought to its aid. Lecturers have astonished us with rows of decimals, as though these could vivify the imaginative faculty, or impart an idea in any respect more elevated than could have been entertained through an unscientific yet devout contemplation of the works and ways of God. They have talked to us of millions, and millions of millions, as though the computation of immense numbers denoted the highest exercise of the human intellect, or the loftiest sublimities of human thought. Sometimes they would vary the effect by telling us how many billions of years it would take for a railroad locomotive to travel across the solar system, or for a cannon ball to fly to the widest range of a comet's orbit, or for the flash of the electric telegraph to reach the supposed remotest confines of the Milky Way. And so we have known some preachers attempt to measure eternity by clocks and pendulums, or sand-glasses as large as the earth's orbit, and dropping one grain of sand every million of years, as though any thing of that kind could come up to the dread impression of that one Saxon word—forever, or the solemn grandeur of the Latin secula seculorum, or to the effect produced by any of those simple reduplications through which language has ever sought to set forth the immeasurable conception, by making its immeasurability the very essence of the thought, and of the term by which it is denoted.

Such contrivances as we have mentioned only weary instead of aiding the conceptive faculty. If any such help is required for the mind, one of the shortest formulas of arithmetic or algebra, we contend, would be the most effective. The more we can express by the highest symbol, the less is the true grandeur of the thought impaired by any of that imitating and ever-foiled effort of the imagination which attends those longer methods that are addressed solely to it. Let us attempt such a formula by taking at once, for our unit of division, the most minute space ever brought into visibility by the highest power of the microscope. Let our dividend on the other hand, be the utmost distance within which the telescope has ever detected the existence of a material entity. Denote the quotient by the letter x, and let r stand for the radius of the earth's orbit. Then rxx is the formula sought; and if any one think for a moment on the immense magnitude of the latter part of the expression (xx), and at what a rate the involution expands itself even when x represents a moderate number,[10] he may judge how immeasurably it leaves behind it all other computations. The whole of the universe made visible by Lord Rosse's telescope actually shrinks to the dimensions of an animalcule in the comparison. And yet, even at that distance, so utterly surpassing all conceivability, we may suppose the existence of worlds still embraced within the dominions of God, and still, in the same ratio, remote from the frontiers of his immeasurable empire.

But let us return from so fruitless an inquiry. There is another idea suggested by the contemplation of the heavens of no less interest, although presenting a very different, if not an opposite aspect. It is the comparative nothingness of the tangible material universe, as contrasted with the space, or spaces, occupied even within its visible boundaries. The distance of our sun from the nearest fixed star (conjectured by astronomers to be the star 61 Cygni) is estimated at being at least 60,000,000,000,000 of miles, or 600,000 diameters of the earth's orbit, or about sixty million diameters of the sun himself. Taking this for the average distance between the stars, although it is doubtless much greater, and supposing them to be equal in magnitude to each other, and to the sun, we have these most striking results. The sun and the star in Cygnus (and so of the others) would present the same relation as that of two balls of ten inches diameter placed ten thousand miles apart, or one a thousand miles above the North Pole, and the other a like distance below the South Pole of our earth. Preserving the same ratio, we might represent them again, by two half-inch bullets placed, the one at Chicago, and the other on the top of the City Hall in the City of New York; and so on, until finally we would come down to two points, less than a thousandth part of an inch in diameter, requiring the microscope to render them visible, and situated at the distance of a mile asunder. Suppose then an inch of the finest thread of thistle-down cut into a thousand sections, and a globular space as large as the sphere of our earth, occupied with such invisible specks, at distances from each other never less than a mile at least, and we have a fair representation of the visible universe—on a reduced scale, it is true, yet still preserving all the relative magnitudes, and all the adjusted proportions of the parts to each other, and to the whole. On any scale we may assume, all that partakes, in the lowest degree, of sensible materiality, bears but an infinitessimal proportion to what appears to be but vacant space. In this view of the matter it becomes more than a probability that there is no relatively denser solidity than this any where existing. Even in the hardest and apparently most impenetrable matter, the ultimate particles may be as sparse in their relative positions, as are, to each other, the higher compound and component bodies which we know are dispersed at such immense distances as mere points in space.

But not to dwell on this idea, there is another of a kindred nature to which we would call attention, although it must often have come home to every serious mind. Who can soberly contemplate the mighty heavens without being struck with what may be called the isolation of the universe, or rather, of the innumerable parts of which it is composed. To the most thoughtful spirit a sense of loneliness must be a main, if not a predominant element in such a survey. The first impression from these glittering points in space may, indeed, be that of a social congregated host. And yet how perfect the seclusion; so that while there is granted a bare knowledge of each other's existence, the possibility of any more intimate communion, without a change in present laws, is placed altogether beyond the reach of hope. What immeasurable fields of space intervene even between those that seem the nearest to each other on the celestial canvas!

We may say, then, that whatever may be reserved for a distant future, this perfect seclusion seems now to be the predominant feature, or law, of the Divine dispensations. No doubt our Creator could easily have formed us with sensitive powers, or a sensitive organization, capable of being affected from immensely remote, as well as from comparatively near distances. There is nothing inconceivable in such an adaptation of the nervous system to a finer class of etherial undulations as might have enabled us to see and hear what is going on in the most distant worlds. But it hath not so pleased Him to constitute us; and [pg 563] we think, with all reverence be it said, that we see wisdom in the denial of such powers unless accompanied by an organization which would, on the other hand, utterly unfit us for the narrow world in which we have our present probationary residence. If the excitements of our limited earth bear with such exhausting power upon our sensitive system, what if a universe should burst upon us with its tremendous realities of weal or woe!

It is in kindness, then, that each world is severed, for the present, from the general intercourse, and that so perfectly that no amount of science can ever be expected to overcome the separation. “He hath set a bound which we can not pass,” except in imagination. Even analogical reasoning utterly fails, or only lights us to the conclusion that the diversities of structure, of scenery, and of condition, must be as great, and as numberless as the spaces, and distances, and positions they respectively occupy. The moral sense, however, is not wholly silent. It has a voice “to which we do well to take heed” when the last rays of reason and analogy have gone out in darkness. It can not be, it affirms—it can not be, that the worlds on worlds which the eye and the telescope reveal to us are but endless repetitions of the fallen earth on which we dwell. What a pall would such a thought spread over the universe! How sad would it render the contemplation of the heavens! How full of melancholy the conception that throughout the measureless fields of space there may be the same wretchedness and depravity that have formed the mournful history of our earth, and which we fail to see in its true intensity, because we have become hardened through long and intimate familiarity with its scenes. And yet, for all that natural science merely, and natural theology can prove, it may be so, and even far worse. For all that they can affirm, either as to possibility or probability, a history of woe surpassing any thing that earth has ever exhibited, or inhabitant of earth has ever imagined, may have every where predominated. The highest reasoning of natural theology can only set out for us some cold system of optimism, which may make it perfectly consistent with its heartless intellectuality to regard the sufferings of a universe, and that suffering a million-fold more intense than any thing ever yet experienced, as only a means to some fancied good time coming, and ever coming, for other dispensations and other races, and other types of being in a future incalculably remote. To a right thinking mind nothing can be more gloomy than that view of the universe which is given by science alone, taking the earth as its base line of measurement, and its present condition (assumed to have come from no moral catastrophe, but to be a necessary result of universal physical laws) as the only ground of legitimate induction. But we have a surer guide than this. Besides the moral sense, we have the representations the Bible gives of God and Christ. These form the ground of the belief that our earth is not a fair sample of the universe, that fallen worlds are rare and extraordinary, as requiring extraordinary mediatorial remedies—that blessedness is the rule and not the exception, and that the Divine love and justice have each respect to individual existences, instead of being both absorbed in that impersonal attribute which has regard only to being in general, or to worlds and races viewed only in reference to some interminable progress, condemned by its own law of development to eternal imperfection, because never admitting the idea of finish of workmanship, or of finality of purpose, either in relation to the universe or any of its parts.