Chapter IX (1)

The centurion received the purse with ill-dissembled joy. Had he been fully able to control himself, he would doubtless have maintained a quiet air of dignified self-possession, befitting one giving full value for what he had received, and therefore not expected to exhibit any peculiarly marked or lively satisfaction. But the affair had been concluded so suddenly, and with such a liberal confidence in his discretion, that, for the moment, his hands trembled with excitement, and his face shone with avaricious pleasure.

Then he began to count out the gold pieces, gleefully dropping some into his pouch, and reluctantly putting others back into the purse. From the first he had established in his own mind the valuation which he would place upon the slave; and he had taken care to make his calculation upon such a liberal scale that he could well afford to consent to a large deduction, if it were required of him. Now he reasoned that, as his child had merely told him to take out what was proper, there could be no impropriety in paying himself at the highest possible price. She would never mind, and there were many comforts which he needed, and which an extra gold piece or two would enable him to procure for himself.

Then, as he weighed the purse and pondered over it, numerous wants and requirements, which he had hardly known until that time, came into his mind. He might supply them all, if he were not too timid or scrupulous in availing himself of an opportunity such as might never come to him again. Had even his first valuation of the slave been a sufficient one? He ought certainly to consider that the man could read and write, and was of such beauty and grace that he could be trained to a most courtly air; and it was hardly proper to sell him for no more than the price of a couple of gladiators, mere creatures of bone and brawn. And, in any event, it was hardly probable that Ænone knew the true value of slaves, or even remembered how much her purse had contained.

Thus meanly reflecting, the centurion dropped more of the gold pieces into his pocket, all the while eying the slave with keen scrutiny, as though calculating the market value of every hair upon his head. Then, with a sigh, he handed back the purse, most wofully lightened of its contents, and turned from the room, endeavoring to compose his features into a decent appearance of sober indifference, and muttering that he would not have allowed himself to be betrayed into giving up such a prize so cheaply had it not been that he had an especial regard for the imperator Sergius Vanno, and that the house of Porthenus had never nourished mere traders to wrangle and chaffer over their property.

In one of his conjectures he had been correct. It was little that Ænone knew or cared about the price she was paying. Had the purse been returned to her entirely empty, she would have thrown it unheedingly into the drawer, and have never dreamed but that all had been rightly done. There was now but one idea filling her heart. She thought not about money nor any imprudence which she was committing, nor yet upon the chance of recognition. She only reflected that the day of her triumph had come--that at the sight of the long-absent lover, Leta would abandon the wrong path in which she had been straying, would throw herself into his arms, would tell him how, through the loss of him, she had become reckless, and had allowed her suffering mind to become perverted from the right--but that now all was again well; and thus confessing and being forgiven, would, in the ever-present joy of that forgiveness, lead for the future a different life, and, instead of a rival, become to her mistress a friend and ally.

Glowing with this bright hope, Ænone scarcely noticed the shuffling departure of the centurion, but, fixing her eyes upon the captive, keenly scrutinized his appearance. Not that it was likely that Leta, in the first flush of her joy at meeting him, would notice or care in what guise he was presented, so long as the soul which had so often responded to her own was there. But it was well that there should be nothing neglected which, without being directly essential to the production of a proper impression, might be tributary to it.

The inspection was satisfactory. Not only was the dress of the captive clean, neat, becoming, and suitable to his station, but his appearance had undergone visible improvement since Ænone had last seen him. The rest and partial composure of even the few intervening days had sufficed to restore tone to his complexion, roundness to his cheeks, and something of the old merry smile to his eyes. And though complete restoration was not yet effected, enough had been accomplished to show that there was much latent beauty which would not fail to develop itself under the stimulant of additional rest and kindly treatment.

'Go in, thither,' said Ænone, pointing to the adjoining room, in which Leta was occupied. 'When you are there, you will--it will be told you what you are to do.'

Cleotos bowed low, and passed through into the other room; and Ænone followed him with a glance which betrayed the longing she felt to enter with him and witness the meeting of the two lovers. But a sense of propriety outweighed her curiosity and restrained her. It was not right, indeed, that she should intrude. Such recognitions should be sacred to the persons directly interested in them. She would therefore remain outside, and there await Cleotos's return. And as she took into her hands a little parchment ode which lay upon her table, and nervously endeavored to interest herself in it, she delightedly pictured the sudden transport of those within the next room, and the beaming joy with which, hand in hand, they would finally emerge to thank her for their newly gained happiness.

In the mean time, Leta, having delivered her message, and received her rebuke for the interruption, had retired to the other room, and there, as usual, resumed her daily task of embroidery. Bending low over the intricate stitches and counting their spaces, her features, at a casual glance, still bore their impress of meek and unconscious humility, so far did her accustomed self-control seem to accompany her even when alone. But a more attentive scrutiny would have detected, half hidden beneath the fringed eyelids, a sparkle of gratified triumph, and, in the slightly bent corners of the mouth, a shade of haughty disdain; and little by little, as the moments progressed, these indications of an inner, irrepressible nature gained in intensity, and, as though her fingers were stayed by a tumult of thought, her work slowly began to slip from her grasp.

At length, lifting her head, and, perhaps, for the first time realizing that she was alone and might indulge her impulses without restraint, she abruptly threw from her the folds of the embroidery, and stood erect. Why should she longer trifle with that weak affair of velvet and dyes? Who was the poor, inanimate, and tearful statue in the next room, to order her to complete those tasks? What to herself were the past deeds of the Vanni, that they should be perpetuated in ill-fashioned tapestry, to be hung around a gilded banquet hall? By the gods! she would from that day make a new history in the family life; and it should be recorded, not with silken threads upon embroidered velvet, but should be engraved deeply and ineffaceably upon human hearts!

Standing motionless in the centre of the room, with one foot upon the half-completed tapestry, she now for the first time, and in a flash of inspiration, gave shape and comeliness to her previously confusedly arranged ideas. Until the present moment she had had but little thought of accomplishing anything beyond skilfully availing herself of her natural attractions so as to climb from her menial position into something a little better and higher. If, in the struggle to raise herself from the degradation of slavery, she were obliged to engage in a rivalry with her mistress, and, by robbing her of the affection naturally belonging to her, were to crush her to the earth, it was a thing to be deplored, but it must none the less be done. She might, perhaps, pity the victim, but the sacrifice must be accomplished all the same.

But now these vague dreams of a somewhat better lot, to be determined by future chance circumstances, rolled away like a shapeless cloud, and left in their place one bright image as the settled object of her ambition. So lofty, so dazzling seemed the prize, that another person would have shrunk in dismay from even the thought of striving for it, and even she, for the moment, recoiled. But she was of too determined a nature to falter long. The higher the object to be attained the fewer would be the competitors, and the greater the chance of success to unwearying determination. And if there were but one chance of success in a thousand, it were still worth the struggle.

This great thought which stimulated her ambition was nothing less than the resolution to become the wife of the imperator Sergius. At first it startled her with its apparent wild extravagance; but little by little, as she weighed the chances, it seemed to become more practicable. There was, indeed, nothing grossly impossible in the idea. Men of high rank had ere now married their slaves, and the corrupted society of Rome had winked at mesalliances which, in the days of the republic, would not have been tolerated. And she was merely a slave from accidental circumstances--being free born, and having, but a month before, been the pride and ornament of a respectable though lowly family. Once let her liberty be restored, and the scarcely perceptible taint of a few weeks' serfdom be removed from her, and she would be, in all social respects, fully the equal of the poor, trembling maid of Ostia, to whom, a few years before, the patrician had not been ashamed to stoop.

This bar of social inequality thus removed, the rest might be in her own hands. Sergius no longer felt for his wife the old affection, under the impulse of which he had wedded her; and the few poor remains of the love which he still cherished, more from habit than otherwise, were fast disappearing. This was already so evident as to have become the common gossip of even the lowliest slaves in the household. And he loved herself instead, for not only his actions, but his words had told her so. A little more craft and plotting, therefore--a little further display of innocent and lowly meekness and timid obedience--a few more well-considered efforts to widen the conjugal breach--a week or two more persistent exercise of those fascinations which men were so feeble to resist--jealousy, recrimination, quarrels, and a divorce--and the whole thing might be accomplished. In those days of laxity, divorce was an easy matter. In this case there was no family influence upon the part of the wife to be set up in opposition--but merely an old centurion, ignorant and powerless. A few writings, for form's sake--and the day that sent the weeping wife from the door might install the manumitted and triumphant slave in her place.

All aglow with the ravishing prospect--her eager hopes converting the possible into the probable, and again, by a rapid change, the probable into the certain, the Greek stood spurning the needle work at her feet. Then glancing around, the whim seized upon her to assume, for a moment in advance, her coming stately dignity. At the side of the room, upon a slightly elevated platform, was a crimson lounge--Ænone's especial and proper seat. Over one arm of this lounge hung, in loose folds, a robe of purple velvet, with an embroidered fringe of pearls--a kind of cloak of state, usually worn by her upon the reception of ceremonious visits. To this lounge Leta strode, threw herself upon it, drew the velvet garment over her shoulders, so that the long folds fell down gracefully and swept the marble pavement at her feet, and there, half sitting, half reclining, assumed an attitude of courtly dignity, as though mistress of the palace.

And it must be confessed that she well suited the place. With her lithe, graceful figure thrown into a position in which the gentle languor of unembarrassed leisure was mingled with the dignity of queenly state--with her burning eyes so tempered in their brilliancy that they seemed ready at the same instant to bid defiance to impertinent intrusion, and to bestow gracious condescension upon suppliant timidity--with every feature glowing with that proper pride which is not arrogance, and that proper kindliness which is not humility--there was probably in all Rome no noble matron who could as well adorn her chair of ceremony. Beside her, the true mistress of the place would have appeared as a timid child dismayed with unaccustomed honors; and in comparison, the empress herself might not fill her throne in the palace of the Cæsars with half the grace and dignity.

Then, as she there sat, momentarily altering her attitude to correspond the better with her ideas of proper bearing, and gathering into newer and more pleasing folds the sweeping breadths of the velvet mantle, the door was slowly swung open, and there glided noiselessly in, clad in its neat and coarse tunic, the timid figure of her old lover Cleotos.

For an instant they remained gazing at each other as though paralyzed. Cleotos--who had looked to see her in her simple white vestment as of old, and had expected at her first glance to rush to her arms, and there be allowed to pour forth his joy at again meeting her, never more to part--beheld with dismay this gorgeously arrayed and queenly figure. This could not be the Leta whom he had known, or, if so, how changed! Was this the customary attire of slaves in high-placed families? Or could it be the token of a guilty favoritism? His heart sank within him; and he stood nervously clinging against the door behind him, fearing to advance, lest, at the first step, some terrible truth, of which he had already seemed to feel the premonitions, might burst upon him.

And she, for the moment, sat aghast, not knowing but that the gods, to punish her pride and ambition, had sent a spectre to confront her. But being of strong mind and but little given to superstitious terrors, she instantly reasoned out the facts of his simultaneous captivity with herself and coincidence of ownership; and her sole remaining doubt was in what manner she should treat him. They had parted in sorrow and tears, and she knew that he now expected her to fall into his arms and there repeat her former vows of constancy and love. But that could not be. Had he come to her but an hour before, while her dreams of the future were of a vague and unsatisfactory character, she might have acted upon such an impulse. But now, a glorious vision of what might possibly happen had kindled her ambition with brighter fires than ever before; and could she surrender all that, and think again only upon starving freedom in a cottage home?

'Is it thou, Cleotos? Welcome to Rome!' she said at length, throwing from her shoulder the purple cloak, and approaching him. As she spoke, she held out her hand. He took it in his own, in a lifeless and mechanical sort of way, and gazed into her face with a strange look of inquiring doubt, which momentarily settled into an expression of deeper apprehension. The blackness of despair began to enter into his soul. Now that she was divested of her borrowed richness, she looked more like herself, and that was surely her voice uttering tones of greeting; but somehow her heart did not seem to be in them, and, for a certainty, this had not been her wonted style of welcome.

'I thought,' she continued, 'that thou wert slain. Certainly when I parted from you ere you fled into the mountains--'

'You know that I fled not at all,' he interrupted, the color mounting into his temples. 'Why do you speak so, Leta? I retired to the mountains to meet my friends there and with them carry on the defence; and, previous thereto, I conducted you to what I believed to be a place of safety. And I fought my best against the foe, and was brought nigh unto death. This I did, though I can boast of but a weak and slender frame. And it is hard that the first greeting of one so well loved as you should be a taunt.'

'Nay, forgive me,' she said. 'I doubt not your valor. It was but in forgetfulness that I spoke. I meant it not for a taunt.' And in truth she had not so meant it. It was but the inadvertent expression of a feeling which the sight of his feeble and boyish figure unwittingly made upon her--an incapacity to connect deeds of valor with apparent physical weakness. But this very inability to judge of his true nature by the soul that strove to look into her own rather than by material impressions was perhaps no slight proof of the little unison between her nature and his.

'Sit down here,' she continued, 'and tell me all that has happened to you.' And they sat together, and he briefly told her of his warlike adventures, his wound, his captivity, his recognition of herself, and his successful attempt to be once more under the same roof with her. And somehow it still seemed to him that their talk was not as of old, and that her sympathy with his misfortunes was but weak and cheerless; and though he tried to interweave the customary words of endearment with his story, there was a kind of inner check upon him, so that they came not readily to his lips as of old. And she sat, trying to listen, and indeed keeping the thread of his adventures in her mind; but all the while finding her attention fail as she speculated how she could best give that explanation of her feelings which she knew would soon be demanded of her.

'And here I am at last, Leta--as yourself, a slave!' he concluded.

'Courage, my friend!' was her answer. 'There are very many degrees and fates reserved for all in this old Rome, and much for every man to learn. And many a one who has begun as a slave has, in the end, attained not only to freedom, but to high honor and station.'

'If the gods were to give me honor and station, far be it from me to refuse the gift,' he said. 'But that, of itself alone, would not content me, unless you were there to share the good with me. And with yourself I would crave no other blessing. We are slaves here, Leta, but even that fate may have its mitigations and happiness for us.'

She was silent. How could she tell it to him? But his suspicions, at first vague, were now aroused by her very silence into more certainty.

'Tell me,' he cried, again taking her hand, 'tell me my fate; and if sorrow is to come upon me, let it come now. It seems as though there were indeed evil tidings in store for me. The blight of anticipated evil even weighed upon me ere I passed yonder hall, and when I knew no reason why I should not find you loving of heart and humble of desire as in other days. Is it all gone? Are you no longer the same? This tawdry velvet in which I found you arrayed--is it the type of a something equally foreign to your nature, and which imperial Rome has thrown about you to aid in crushing out the better feelings of your heart?'

'My friend, my brother,' she said at length, with some real pity and some false sorrow, 'why have we again met? Why is it now forced upon me to tell you that the past must always be the past with us?'

He dropped her hand, and the tears started into his eyes. Much as the words and gestures of the last few minutes had prepared him for the announcement, yet when it came, it smote him as though there had been no premonition of it; so lovingly had his heart persisted in clinging to the faint hope that he might have been mistaken. A low wail of anguish burst from his lips.

'And this is the end of all?' he sobbed.

'Think only,' she said, 'think only that I am not worthy of you.'

'The old story--the old story which has been repeated from the beginning of the world,' he cried, stung into life by something of heartlessness which he detected in her affected sympathy. 'The woman weaves her toils about the man--gilds his life until there is no brightness which can compare with it--fills his heart with high hopes of a blissful future--so changes his soul that he can cherish no thought but of her--so alters the whole tenor and purpose of his existence that he even welcomes slavery as a precious boon because it brings him under the same roof with her. And then--some other fancy having crossed her mind--or an absence of a week or two having produced forgetfulness--she insults him with a cruel mockery of self-unworthiness as her sole apology for perfidy.'

'Nay,' she exclaimed, half glad of an excuse to quarrel with him. 'If you would rather have it otherwise, think, then, that I have never loved you as I should, even though I may have imagined that I did.'

'Go on,' he said, seeing that she hesitated.

'I know,' she continued, 'that in other days you have had my words for it, uttered, indeed, in sympathy and truth, as I then felt them. But I was a simple girl, then, Cleotos. The sea before me and the mountains behind bounded all my knowledge of the world. The people whom I saw were but few. The tastes I had were simple. Is it wonderful that I should have listened to the first one who spoke to me of love, and should have imagined that my heart made response to him? But now, now, Cleotos--'

'Now, what?' he exclaimed. 'Would you say that now you have seen the world better and think differently? What is there in all that you have since known that should change you? Is it that the sight of war and tumult--of burning towns and bleeding captives--of insolent soldiers and cruel taskmasters can have made you less in favor with our own native, vine-covered retreat, with its neighborhood of simple peasantry? Or would you say that since then you have met others whom you can love better than me? Whom, indeed, have you seen but weary prisoners like myself, or else unpitying conquerors whose love would be your shame? You blush, Leta! Pray the gods that it be not the latter! Struggle sternly with yourself to realize that you are merely for the moment fascinated by the unaccustomed splendors of this swarming city; and that after its first brightness has worn off from your dazzled eyes, your soul may return to its native, pure simplicity and innocence, and--and to me.'

'Speak not so, Cleotos,' she responded. 'My eyes are not dazzled with any splendors; but for all that, our ways now and forever lie in different directions. We are slaves, and can give little heed to our affections. Our only course must be for each to strive to rise above this serfdom; and if, in doing so, either can help the other, it must be done--but in friendship, not in love. To you, through good conduct, there may open, even in slavery, many posts of influence and profit; and, in so much, of better worth than our own boasted liberty with poverty. And as for me--I see my destiny already beckoning me to a position such as many a free Roman woman might envy.'

Speaking thus obscurely of her anticipated grandeur--to be gained, perhaps, by abasement, but none the less in her mind certain to end in such legitimate position as might sanctify the previous steps thereto--her face again lit up with a glow of pride, as though she were already the powerful patrician's wife. And revelling in such dreams, she saw not the agony which overspread her listener's face as he read her thoughts partly awrong, and believed her content to throw herself away forever, in order to gain some temporary exaltation as a wealthy Roman's plaything.

'And when that day does come,' she continued, 'if, for the memory of our old friendship, I can help to elevate you to some better sphere--'

'Enough! No more!' he cried bitterly; and starting from her, he fled out of the room. It were hard enough that he should lose her, harder yet that he should hear her marking out for herself a life of ruin for some temporary gain, but harder than all, that she should dare to mistake his nature so far as to insult him with the promise of aiding his prosperity through such an influence.

'Let me go hence!' he cried, in his agony, to Ænone, who, still radiant with her newly discovered hope, met him at the door. 'Send me to the captain Polidorus--anywhere--only let me leave this house!'

AMERICAN SLAVERY AND FINANCES.

By Hon. Robert J. Walker.

[The following article, from the pen of Hon. R. J. Walker, forms
the APPENDIX to the volume just published in England, and
now exciting great attention there, containing the various
pamphlets issued by him during the last six months. The subjects
discussed embrace Jefferson Davis and Repudiation, Recognition,
Slavery, Finances and Resources of the United States. It would be
difficult to overestimate the effect of these Letters abroad. As
our readers already possess them in the pages of THE
CONTINENTAL, we enable them to complete the series by
furnishing the ensuing Appendix. It closes with an extract from an
'Introductory Address' delivered by Mr. Walker before the National
Institute, at Washington, D. C., giving a short account of the
various improvements and discoveries made by our countrymen in the
Inductive Sciences. As showing to England what a high rank we had
even then taken in the world of science, and pointing out to her
the number and fame of our savants, it will be read with just pride
and interest. As the Address was delivered in 1844, it of course
contains no details of our marvellous progress since that date in
science and discovery.--ED. CONTINENTAL.]

We have seen by the Census Tables, if the product _per capita_ of the Slave States in 1859 had been equal to that of the Free States for that year, that the ADDITIONAL value produced in 1859 in the Slave States would have been $1,531,631,000. Now as our population augmented during that decade 35.59 per cent., this _increased_ value, at that ratio, in 1869 would have been $2,052,332,272. If multiplying the amount _each year_ by three only, instead of 3-559/1000 the result, during that decade, would have been as follows:

Product of 1860, $1,559,039,962
" 1861, 1,605,811,060
" 1862, 1,654,085,391
" 1863, 1,703,707,952
" 1864, 1,754,819,198
" 1865, 1,807,464,773
" 1866, 1,861,688,716
" 1867, 1,917,539,377
" 1868, 1,975,065,558
" 1869, 2,034,317,524
-------------
Total augmented
product of the $17,873,539,511
decade

That is, the total _increased_ product of the Slave States, during the decade from 1859 to 1869, would have been $17,873,539,511, if the production in the Slave States had been equal, _per capita_, to that of the Free States. This, it will be remembered, is gross product. This, it will be perceived, is far below the actual result, as we can see by comparing the real product of 1869, $2,052,332,272, as before given, with the $2,034,317,524, as the result of a multiplication by three each year.

The ratio of the increase of our _wealth_, from 1850 to 1860, as shown by the census, was much greater than that of our population--namely, 126.45 per cent. Multiplying by this ratio (126.45), the result would be an _additional_ product in 1860, in the Slave States, of $3,427,619,475. But our wealth increases in an augmented ratio during each decade.

Thus, the ratio of the increase of our wealth, as shown by the census, was as follows:

From 1820 to 1830, 41 per cent.
" 1830 to 1840, 42 "
" 1840 to 1850, 64 "
" 1850 to 1860, 126.45 "

Thus, the increase of our wealth from 1840 to 1850, was more than 50 per cent. greater than from 1830 to 1840; and from 1850 to 1860, nearly double that from 1840 to 1850. At the same duplicate ratio, from 1850 to 1870, the result would be over 250 per cent. That such would have been a close approximation to the true result, is rendered still more probable by the fact, that the product of 1859, as shown by the census, was 250 per cent. greater than that of 1849.

If, then, instead of 126.45 per cent., we were to assume 250 per cent. as the ratio, the result would be in 1869, $5,297,708,612, as the _increased_ product of the Slave States that year, if the ratio _per capita_ were equal to that of the Free States. If we carry out these ratios from 1859 to 1869, either of 126.45, or of 250, into the aggregate of the decade, the results are startling. Assuming, however, that of the population only, we have seen that the aggregate result in the decade from 1859 to 1869 was over seventeen billions of dollars, or largely more than ten times our debt incurred by this rebellion.

When, then, I reassert the opinion, heretofore expressed by me, that as the result of the superiority of free over slave labor, our wealth in 1870, and especially in each succeeding decade, as a consequence of the entire abolition of Slavery in the United States, will be far greater, notwithstanding the debt, than if the rebellion had never occurred, there is here presented conclusive official proof of the truth of this statement. We have seen that our wealth increased from 1850 to 1860, 126.45 per cent., whilst that of England, from 1851 to 1861, augmented only at the rate of 37 per cent.

Applying these several ratios to the progress of the wealth of the United Kingdom and the United States, respectively, in 1870, 1880, 1890, and 1900, the result is given below.

We have seen by the census, that our national wealth was, in

1850, $7,135,780,228
1860, 16,159,616,068

Increase from 1850 to 1860, 126.45 per cent.

England, from 1851 to 1861, 37 per cent.

Assuming these ratios, the result would be as follows:

UNITED KINGDOM.

1861, wealth, $31,500,000,000
1871, " 48,155,000,000
1881, " 59,122,350,000
1891, " 80,997,619,500
1901, " 110,966,837,715

UNITED STATES.

1860, wealth, $16,159,616,068
1870, " 36,593,450,585
1880, " 82,865,868,849
1890, " 187,314,353,225
1900, " 423,330,438,288

Thus, it appears by the census of each nation, that, each increasing in the same ratio respectively as for the last decade, the wealth of the United States in 1880 would exceed that of the United Kingdom $23,743,518,849; that in 1890 it would be much more than double, and in 1900, approaching quadruple that of the United Kingdom.

When we reflect that England increases in wealth much more rapidly than any other country of Europe, the value of these statistics may be estimated, as proving how readily our national debt can be extinguished without oppressive taxation.

These are the results, founded on the actual statistics, without estimating the enormous increase of our national wealth, arising from the abolition of Slavery. We have seen that, by the official tables of the census of 1860, the value of the _products_ of the United States, so far as given, for the year 1859, was $5,290,000,000. But this is very short of the actual result. The official report (pages 59, 190, 198 to 210) shows that this included _only_ the products of 'agriculture, manufactures, mines, and fisheries.' In referring to the result as to '_manufactures_,' at page 59 of his official report before given, the Superintendent says: 'If to this amount were added the very large aggregate of mechanical productions below the annual value of $500, of which no official cognizance is taken, the result would be one of _startling magnitude_.'

1. This omission alone, for gross product, is estimated at $500,000,000.

2. Milk and eggs, fodder, wood, poultry, and feathers, omitted, gross products, estimated at $350,000,000.

3. Gross earnings of trade and commerce, including freights, &c., by land and water, $1,000,000,000.

4. Gross earnings of all other pursuits and business, including all other omissions, $1,000,000,000.

Total gross products of 1860, as thus estimated, $8,140,000,000, of which the amount for the Free States, as estimated, is $6,558,334,000, and for the Slave States, $1,581,666,000.

I have heretofore referred to the vast influence of _education_ as one of the principal causes of the greater product _per capita_ in the Free than in the Slave States, of the much larger number of patents, of inventions, and discoveries, in the former than in the latter.

At the April meeting of 1844, upon the request of the Society, I delivered at Washington (D. C.) the Introductory Address for the National Institute, in which, up to that date, an account was given by me of 'the various improvements and discoveries made by our countrymen in the inductive sciences.' On reference to that address, which was published at its date (April, 1844), with their _bulletin_, it will be seen that, from the great Franklin down to Kinnersley, Fitch, Rumsey, Fulton, Evans, Rush, the Stevenses of New Jersey, Whitney, Godfrey, Rittenhouse, Silliman, J. Q. Adams, Cleveland, Adrain, Bowditch, Hare, Bache, Henry, Pierce, Espy, Patterson, Nulty, Morse, Walker, Loomis, Rogers, Saxton, and many others; these men, with scarcely an exception, were from the Free States.

EXTRACT.

And, first, of electricity. This has been cultivated with the greatest success in our country, from the time when Franklin with his kite drew down electricity from the thunder cloud, to that when Henry showed the electrical currents produced by the distant lightning discharge. In Franklin's day the idea prevailed that there were two kinds of electricity, one produced by rubbing vitreous substances, the other by the friction of resinous bodies. Franklin's theory of one electric fluid in all bodies, disturbed in its equilibrium by friction, and thus accumulating in one and deserting the other, maintains its ground, still capable of explaining the facts elicited in the progress of modern discovery. Franklin believed that electricity and lightning were the same, and proceeded to the proof. He made the perilous experiment, by exploring the air with a kite, and drawing down from the thunder cloud the lightning's discharge upon his own person. The bold philosopher received unharmed the shock of the electric fluid, more fortunate than others who have fallen victims to less daring experiments. The world was delighted with the discoveries of the great American, and for a time electricity was called Franklinism on the continent of Europe; but Franklin was born here, and the name was not adopted in England. While Franklin made experiments, Kinnersley exhibited and illustrated them, and also rediscovered the seemingly opposite electricities of glass and resin. Franklin's lightning rod is gradually surmounting the many difficulties with which it contended, as experience attests the greater safety of houses protected by the rod, properly mounted, whilst the British attempt to substitute balls for points has failed. This question, as to powder magazines, has lately excited much controversy. Should a rod be attached to the magazine, or should it be placed upon a post at some distance? This question has been solved by Henry. When an electrical discharge passes from one body to another, the electricity in all the bodies in the neighborhood is affected. Henry magnetized a needle in a long conductor, by the discharge from a cloud, more than a mile from the conductor. If a discharge passes down a rod, attached to a powder house, may it not cause a spark to pass from one receptacle for powder to another, and thus inflame the whole? The electrical plenum, which Henry supposed, is no doubt disturbed, and to great distances; but the effect diminishes with the distance. If all the principal conductors about a building can be connected with a lightning rod, there is no danger of a discharge; for it is only in leaving or entering a conductor that electricity produces heating effects; but if not, the rod is safer at a moderate distance from the building. The rate at which electricity moved was another of the experiments of Franklin. A wire was led over a great extent of ground, and a discharge passed through it. No interval could be perceived between the time of the spark passing to and from the wire at the two ends. Not long since, Wheatston of England, aided by our own great mechanic, Saxton, solved the problem. This has induced Arago, of France, to propose to test the rival theories of light, by similar means--to measure thus a velocity, to detect which has heretofore required a motion over the line of the diameter of the earth's orbit.

In galvanism, our countrymen have made many important discoveries. Dr. Hare invented instruments of such great power as well to deserve the names of calorimeter and deflagrator. The most refractory substances yielded to the action of the deflagrator, melting like wax before a common fire. Even charcoal was supposed to be fused in the experiments of Hare and Silliman, and the visionary speculated on the possibility of black as well as white diamonds. Draper, by his most ingenious galvanic battery, of two metals and two liquids, with one set of elements, in a glass tube not the size of the little finger, was able to decompose water. Faraday, of England, discovered the principle, that when a current of electricity is set in motion, or stopped in a conductor, a neighboring conductor has a current produced in the opposite direction. Henry proved that this principle might be made available to produce an action of a current upon itself, by forming a conductor in the whirls of a spiral, so that sparks and shocks might be obtained by the use of such spirals, when connected with a pair of galvanic plates, a current from which could give no sparks and no shocks. Henry's discoveries of the effects of a current in producing several alternations in currents in neighboring conductors--the change of the quality of electricity which gives shocks to the muscles into that producing heat, and _vice versa_--his mode of graduating these shocks--his theoretical investigations into the causes of these alternations--are abstruse, but admirable; and his papers have been republished throughout Europe. The heating effects of a galvanic current have been applied by Dr. Hare to blasting. The accidents which so often happen in quarries may be avoided by firing the charge from a distance, as the current which heats the wire, passing through the charge, may be conveyed, without perceptible diminution, through long distances. A feeble attempt to attribute this important invention of Dr. Hare to Colonel Pasley, an English engineer, has been abandoned. This is the marvellous agent by which our eminent countryman, Morse, encouraged by an appropriation made by Congress, will, by means of his electric telegraph, soon communicate information forty miles, from Washington to Baltimore, more rapidly than by whispering in the ear of a friend sitting near us. A telegraph on a new plan at that time, invented by Mr. Grout, of Massachusetts, in 1799, asked a question and received an answer in less than ten minutes through a distance of ninety miles. The telegraph of Mr. Morse will prove, I think, superior to all others; and the day is not distant when, by its aid, we may perhaps ask questions and receive replies across our continent, from _ocean to ocean_, thus uniting with steam in enlarging the limits over which our Republic may be safely extended.[2]

Many of our countrymen have contributed to the branch which regards the action of electrified and magnetic bodies. Lukens's application of magnetism to steel (called _touching_), the compass of Bissel for detecting local attraction, of Burt for determining the variation of the compass, and the observations on the variations of the needle made by Winthrop and Dewitt, deserve notice and commendation. Not long since, Gauss, of Germany, invented instruments by which the changes of magnetic variation and force could be accurately determined. Magnetic action is ever varying. The needle does not point in the same direction for even a few minutes together. The force of magnetism, also, perpetually varies. 'True as the needle to the pole' is not a correct simile for the same place, and, if we pass from one spot to another, is falsified at each change of our position; for the needle changes its direction, and the force varies. Enlarged and united observations, embracing the various portions of the world, must produce important results. The observations at Philadelphia, conducted by Dr. A. D. Bache, and now continued by him under the direction of the Topographical Bureau, are of great value, and will, it is hoped, be published by Congress. Part of them have already first seen the light in Europe--a result much to be regretted, for we are not strong enough in science to spare from the national records the contributions of our countrymen.

These combined observations, progressing throughout the world, are of the highest importance. The University of Cambridge, the American Philosophical Society, and Girard College have erected observatories; and one connected with the Depot of Charts and Instruments has been built in this city last year by the Government, and thoroughly furnished with instruments for complete observations. The names of Bache, Gillis, Pierce, Lovering, and Bond are well known in connection with these establishments.

A magnetic survey of Pennsylvania has been made by private enterprise, and the beginning of a survey in New York. Loomis has observed in Ohio, Locke in Ohio and Iowa, and to him belongs the discovery of the position of the point of greatest magnetic intensity in the Western World. Most interesting magnetic observations (now in progress of publication by Congress) are the result of the toilsome, perilous, and successful expedition, under Commander Wilkes, of our navy, by whom was discovered the Antarctic continent, and a portion of its soil and rock brought home to our country.

The analogy of the auroral displays with those of electricity in motion, was first pointed out by Dr. A. D. Bache, whose researches, in conjunction with Lloyd of Dublin, to determine whether differences of longitude could be measured by the observations of small simultaneous changes in the position of the magnetic needle, led to the knowledge of the curious fact, that these changes, which had been traced as simultaneous, or nearly so, in the continent of Europe, did not so extend across the Atlantic.

Kindred to these two branches are electro-magnetism and magneto-electricity, connected with which, as discoverers, are our countrymen Dana, Green, Hare, Henry, Page, Rogers, and Saxton. The reciprocal machine for producing shocks, invented by Page, and the powerful galvanic magnet of Henry, are entitled to respectful notice. This force, it was thought, might be substituted for steam; but no experiments have as yet established its use, on any important scale, as a motive power. The fact that an electrical spark could be produced by a peculiar arrangement of a coil of wire, connected with a magnet, is a recent discovery; and the first magneto-electric machine capable of keeping up a continuous current was invented by Saxton.

Electricity and magnetism touch in some points upon heat. Heat produces electrical currents; electrical currents produce heat. Heat destroys magnetism. Melted iron is incapable of magnetic influence. Reduction of temperature in iron so far decreases the force, that a celebrated philosopher made an elaborate series of experiments to ascertain whether a great reduction of temperature might not develop magnetic properties in metals other than iron. This branch of thermo-electricity has received from us but little attention. Franklin's experiments, by placing differently colored cloths in the snow, and showing the depth to which they sank, are still quoted, and great praise has been bestowed abroad on a more elaborate series of experiments, by a descendant of his, Dr. A. D. Bache, proving that this law does not hold good as to heat, unaccompanied by light. The experiments of Saxon and Goddard demonstrate that solid bodies do slowly evaporate. It is proper here to mention our countryman, Count Rumford, whose discoveries as to the nature and properties of heat, improvement in stoves and gunnery, and in the structure of chimneys and economy of fuel, have been so great and useful.

Light accompanies heat of a certain temperature. That it acts directly to increase or decrease magnetic force, is not yet proved; and the interesting experiments made by Dr. Draper, in Virginia, go to show that it is without magnetic influence. The discussion of this subject forms, the branch of optics, touching physical science on the one side, the most refined, and the highest range of mathematics on the other. Rittenhouse first suggested the true explanation of the experiment, of the apparent conversion of a cameo into an intaglio, when viewed through a compound microscope, and anticipated many years Brewster's theory. Hopkinson wrote well on the experiment made by looking at a street lamp through a slight texture of silk. Joscelyn, of New York, investigated the causes of the irradiation manifested by luminous bodies, as for instance the stars. Of late, photographic experiments have occupied much attention, and Draper has advanced the bold idea, supported by experiment, that the agent in the so-called photography, is not light, nor heat, but an agent differing from any other known principle. Henry has investigated the luminous emanation from lime, calcined with sulphur, and certain other substances, and finds that it differs much from light in some of its qualities.

Astronomy is the most ancient and highest branch of physics. One of our earliest and greatest efforts in this branch was the invention of the mariner's quadrant, by Godfrey, a glazier of Philadelphia. The transit of Venus, in the last century, called forth the researches of Rittenhouse, Owen, Biddle, and President Smith, near Philadelphia, and of Winthrop, at Boston. Two orreries were made by Rittenhouse, as also a machine for predicting eclipses. Most useful observations, connected with the solar eclipses, from 1832 to 1840, have been made by Paine, of Boston. We have now well-supplied observatories at West Point, Washington, Cambridge, Philadelphia, Hudson, Ohio, and Tuskaloosa, Alabama; and the valuable labors of Loomis, Bartlett, Gillis, Bond, Pierce, Walker, and Kendall are well known. Mr. Adams, so distinguished in this branch and that of weights and measures, laid last year the corner stone of an observatory at Cincinnati, where will soon be one of the largest and most powerful telescopes in the world. Most interesting observations as to the great comet of 1843 were made by Alexander, Anderson, Bartlett, Kendall, Pierce, Walker, Downes, and Loomis, and valuable astronomical instruments have been constructed by Amasa Holcomb, of Massachusetts, and Wm. J. Young, of Philadelphia.

It is difficult to class the brilliant meteors of November the 13th, 1833. If such meteors are periodic, the discovery was made by Professor Olmsted; and Mr. Herrick, of New Haven, has added valuable suggestions. The idea that observers, differently placed at the time of appearance and disappearance of the same meteor, would give the means of determining differences of longitude, was first applied in our own country, where the difference of longitude of Princeton and Philadelphia was determined by observations of Henry and Alexander, Espy and Bache. In meteorology our countrymen have succeeded well. Dr. Wells, of South Carolina, elaborated his beautiful and original theory of the formation of dew, and supported it by many well-devised and conclusive experiments. The series of hourly observations, by Professor Snell and Captain Mordecai, are well known; and the efforts of New York and Pennsylvania, of the medical department of the army, and its present enlightened head, Dr. Lawson, have much advanced this branch of science. The interesting question, Does our climate change? seems to be answered thus far in the negative, by registers kept in Massachusetts and New York. There are two rival theories of storms. That of Redfield, of a rotary motion of a wide column of air, combined with a progressive motion in a curved line. Espy builds on the law of physics, examines the action of an upmoving column of air, shows the causes of its motion and the results, and then deduces his most beautiful theory of rain and of land and water spouts. This he puts to the test of observation; and in the inward motion of wind toward the centre of storms, finds a striking verification of his theory. This theory is also sustained by the overthrow or injury, in the recent tornado at Natchez, of the houses whose doors and windows were closed, while those which were open mostly escaped unhurt. Mr. Espy must be considered, not only here, but throughout the world, as at the head of this branch of science. This subject has been greatly advanced by Professor Loomis, whose paper has been pronounced, by the highest authority, to be the best specimen of inductive reasoning which meteorology has produced. The most recent and highly valuable meteorological works of Dr. Samuel Forry are much esteemed. Many important discoveries in pneumatics were made by Dr. Franklin and Count Rumford, and the air pump was also greatly improved by Dr. Prince, of Salem.