a country has as much right to its good name as any one of its citizens. "There is another cause of misconception between Europe and America, of which the latter is entirely innocent, and for which the former is not obnoxious to any very severe censure. It arises from the habit of referring all estimates to a familiar scale. Europe is tolerably familiar with all its own peculiarities, but it knows little of ours, and by consequence, whenever it becomes necessary to graduate an American fact, it is reduced to the European standard, if possible; and if impossible, it is incontinently set down as an American invention. England is a good deal addicted to accusing us of inventing untruths, while she denies our faculty of inventing the powerloom, the cloth-dresser, the steel reed-cutter, and fifty other machines now in use in that country, and which I believe we did, in good truth, invent. The existence of the Sea-serpent is denied on a reason no better, if examined, than that there never has been one in the Bay of Biscay or the English Channel. A striking instance of this indisposition to believe more of America than happens in Europe occurred lately in Paris under my immediate observation. An application was made to the American Legation for information on the subject of Public Instruction in the United States, in behalf of a society devoted to subjects of this nature. An American obtained the official reports of the common schools of the State of New York, and transmitted them to the proper person. Soon after, the Minister of Public Instruction, to whom these reports were given, made a speech on the French schools in the Chamber of Deputies, in which he quoted particulars from the above-named report. The average of the population of New York for the year 1830, to which the report referred, was about 1,930,000 souls, and the average of the scholars, in the common or public schools, was a small fraction less than 500,000; there were to be added, by estimate, 50,000 for the private schools, making 550,000 scholars in a population of 1,930,000. Now, it is a well-known fact that the proportion of infants to adults in America is much greater than it is in Europe, and vastly greater than it is in France. The Minister read his extracts very well until he got to the number of scholars, when (probably startled with a fact so un-French, as you would say in England) he suddenly reduced, on his own authority, the number to 200,000! It is quite evident he meant no more than to save his own reputation for veracity and observation, for he immediately added, or all the children they had.' Every day furnishes evidence of this propensity; nor are those who indulge in it at all pleased at being set right. A paragraph has just been running the round of the French papers, giving less than three hundred as the number of the American newspapers. I happen to have in my possession a minute account of the journals of New York, by which it appears there are in that single state 237. This ratio would give about 1300 for the whole country; but it is probably too high-a thousand would be near the truth: and this fact I took the pains to state, referring to authorities, and carrying my communication in person to two of the journals, neither of which would make the correction. We Americans are constantly accused of not making the world acquainted with our own condition, and then of complaining that the world knows nothing about us. These are not the first, by fifty instances, in which I have been made to see that Europe must have such information as suits her own views, or she would rather do without it altogether. "As for the book of Mr. Hall, I repeat, let his opinions pass for what they are worth. His facts are greatly in our favour, in my view of the subject, though they are not often as much so as they ought to be. I do not mean to accuse him of wilful misrepresentation, for I have no reason to believe he has been guilty of it; but I propose to show you, that he has mutilated things in a way entirely to mislead his reader. To begin with a visible object. "Mr. Hall says, in so many words, that an American stage resembles a French diligence more than any thing else. Of this fact you shall judge for yourself. A diligence has four broad tired wheels, a stage, four narrow tired; the first has five horses driven by postilions, the last, four driven in hand; the first is composed of three compart ments, resembling three carriage bodies, the last, of one; the first is on horizontal springs, the last, on upright jacks; the first carries its baggage on top, the last, behind; the first carries passengers on top, with a cabriolet, the last does not; the first travels five miles an hour, the last, from five to twelve, generally about eight. Now I do not know two things in art, appropriated to the same uses, which resemble each other less than a French diligence and an American stage. It is quite evident, by the foregoing description, that the resemblance is much stronger between an English coach and an American stage, although they differ essentially. We will go to less material things. "Mr. Hall sums up his statistical information in a table annexed to Vol. III. This is an imposing looking document, and it is quite evidently intended to set the reader right in several points believed, until the publication of the book, to be misunderstood. One of its objects is to show the ratio of contribution to Government by each inhabitant. We will first touch on this point. The table gives the amount of population of each State and its annual expenditure, then dividing the last by the first, it gets the ratio of contribution. The line of New York stands as follows, omitting those items which are not connected with the ratio of contribution. It must also be remembered, that all the calculations are expressly made to January 1, 1828. "New York population, 1,611,307; receipts, 1,888,312 dols; expenditure, 1,934,307 dols.; each person pays to State Government, 1 dol. 17 cents. Now I am quite willing to believe that Captain Hall, when he made out his table, did it in perfect good faith, but I must also believe that he did it with so strong a desire to establish his case, that he was accessary to his own blunders. The population of New York on June 1, 1825, was found to be, by actual enumeration, 1,616,458, or 5,151 more than his table makes it two years and a-half later. A census was taken on June 1, 1830. I have not seen the full returns of this census, but I have seen them all, with the exception of one ward in the city of New York, and one township in Oneide county. The result cannot differ greatly from 1,925,000 souls. The date chosen by Mr. Hall, for his table, divides the period between these two enumerations in nearly equal parts. The gain between 1825 and 1830 is 308,697; half of this, or 154,346 souls, added to the known population of 1825, would give us very nearly the population of January 1, 1828. The result would be 1,766,653. As the increase is a little dependent on the original stock, however, this amount may possibly be the odd 6,653 too many. Mr. Hall is then clearly mistaken by ten per cent. So much for his division; let us see if his dividend is any better. Mr. Hall gives the Comptroller of the State as his authority, for saying the expenditure of New York was 1,934,307 dols. taking, as it would appear, an average of the years 1826-7-8. In neither of these years did the State of New York impose any tax on its citizens. By the Comptroller's reports, it appears that the average current expenses of New York are, one year with another, those named included, about 320,000 dols. This includes the ordinary and extraordinary expenses, which, together, vary from 250,000 to 350,000 dollars. But the State is very rich, It owns land, bank stock, has a fund for the support of common, schools, and is the proprietor of sundry salt works, and of a vast deal of canal. The latter alone produces an income of more than a million annually. Now all these receipts pass through the Treasury, the Treasurer being bound to keep the public funds. In order to make the canals, the State borrowed money, some years since, pledging their receipts, and certain other of their funds, together with the general faith of the State, to the repayment. This debt cannot yet be paid, by the terms of the loans, and consequently after paying the interest, a large balance is invested yearly, awaiting the time when the debt can be paid. This period will arrive in a few years, after which it will become a question what is to be done with the income from the State property? for should the tolls on the canals be continued, there will be an excess of quite a million and a-half over the present rate of expenditure. Let us see whence this money of the canal fund comes. It is derived from tolls on goods transported, partly into other States, and partly into Canada, and partly for home use. It is a rent for the use of saltsprings, the property of the State, of which salt a great deal is sold in Canada! You will remember the " salt duty," as it is called, is not a tax, but strictly a rent, for anybody may consume salt made any where else, in the Superintendant's own house if he please, without the smallest imposition from the States. You see that Mr. Hall has made the capital mistake of setting down the whole of the accounts of the State as its expenditure. He may say, and very justly, that the Comptroller has reported 1,934,307 dols. as paid. The money belonging to the school fund is periodically transferred to the proper agent, and the interest of the canal debt being paid, the balance of that fund is transferred to the Commissioners, to keep good the faith of the State against the day when the debt itself can be discharged. The reserve sum is now large, and will soon equal the entire debt. The object of Mr. Hall is, to show how much the citizen of New York pays for the protection of Government. This can be done by proving his actual contribution for that purpose. But in 1828 there was no contribution, the property of the State being equal to its wants. Still there was a current expenditure, and this current expenditure, or about 300,000 dols. should have been his dividend instead of 1,934,307! The proposition would then have been, 1,760,000)30,000,000(18. The answer being 18 cents, instead of one dollar, 17 cents, as recorded by Mr. Hall, and this without entering at all into the merits of the question of how much money a community might choose to spend, annually, simply because it had it to spend. It is not at all probable that New York, when its canal debt is paid, will hoard its receipts, and then we shall see a community living on its private fortune like an individual. Fancy, for instance, that the Duke of Bridgewater had bequeathed to England his canal for the benefit of common schools. The money would pass through the hands of a public officer, but would it be fair to charge it against the subject as so much additional imposition? In this way the more property a State possesses the poorer it will appear on paper! Mr. Hall makes a similar error in his statement of the cost of the United States Government, and in his estimate of the population, considered in reference to the contribution of each individual. He underrates the population at least half a million, as is proved by the census of 1830, and he includes in the expenditure all investments and payments, and not only the interest but the money paid on the principal of the public debt. Ten millions a year is appropriated to the debt, by far the greater part being for diminishing the principal; though the payments necessarily vary according to the original conditions of the several loans. Nor is this all. His table says distinctly, that the debt was reduced only 2,734,374 dols. in the year 1826, when a document before me shows that there was paid 11,684,465 dols. on account of the debt that year, of which sum only 3,977,864 dols. were for interest. Here is a mistake of 4,972,227 dols., or of nearly two-thirds! Nothing is more probable than that some small errors exist in the figures used by careless printers; but I have consulted several different documents, and though I find one or two trifling oversights of this nature, I see nothing to justify the difference between my statements and those of the table of Mr. Hall. "Now I give you the following copy from Mr. Hall's table, in order that you may judge for yourself of its value, by comparing one part of it with another." TABLE III. Expenditures (meaning of Government of United States). "I omit his statement in sterling money, as unnecessary to our object. The first thing which strikes us on looking at these tables is, the large comparative amount of the "Revolutionary Pensions." These pensions were granted about the time Mr. Hall has chosen for his mean of expenditures, and are to be considered as a fruit of the flourishing state of the American finances. The peace was made in 1783, and allowing fifteen to have been the age of the soldier at that period, the youngest of these pensioners must be sixty-three years old to-day. It is clearly a temporary expenditure, and is creditable to the nation; and yet it is one-twentieth of the whole expenditure that even Mr. Hall charges. The other pensions are the result of the war of 1812, chiefly. The Indian Department, i.e. payments, annuities, &c. to those Indians we are said to rob. Its amount is 734,714 dols. annually. We will now compare Mr. Hall with himself. By adding his reductions of the debt together, we find a total of 16,312,811 dols. for the years 1826-7-8. By multiplying his mean of payments on debt by three, we get an answer of 33,140,094 dols. By taking the mean of his debts for the years 1825-6-7, we get 79,609,949 dols., for the sake of convenience, we will say, of 80,000,000 dols. for the mean of the public debt during Mr. Hall's three years. Were all this debt at six per cent. interest, the yearly interest would be 4,800,000 dols. Our proposition would then stand as follows: Money paid on account of debt, Deduct interest 14,400,000 18,740,094 Now here is a balance of 2,427,283 dols. entirely unexplained. Let us see if it is enough. By a table in the American National Kalen dar, I find there was paid on account of interest on the public debt, in the years 1826-7-8, only 10,562,803 dols. instead of the 14,400,000 dols. above allowed. Deducting this sum from our estimate of debt, at 6 per cent. (it is notorious that the average was less than five,) and we get nearly four millions more to add to this unexplained balance! Any one can correct the table for himself, by a knowledge of the fact that the United States did not pay more than 6 per cent. interest |