Page:Stryker's American Register and Magazine, Volume 6, 1851.djvu/297

Rh commerce, and government; to the works of philosophers and travellers; to everything, in short, fitted to throw light on the progress of opulence and civilization. We should mark the successive changes which have taken place in the fortunes and condition of the different ranks and orders of men in our own country and in others; should trace the rise, progress, and decline of population and industry; and, above all, should analyze and compare the influence of different institutions and regulations, and carefully discriminate the various circumstances wherein advancing and declining societies differ from each other. These investigations are so very complex and difficult, that it is not possible, perhaps, always to arrive at a right conclusion. But, though they may not be quite free from error, they are sufficient, when made with the requisite care and attention, to unfold the principal sources of national opulence and refinement, and of poverty and degradation; and however defective, they furnish the only available means for satisfactorily solving the various problems in the science of wealth, and for devising a scheme of public administration, fitted to insure the advancement of nations in the career of improvement."

The commissioners for the census of Ireland, in 1841, in the introduction to the census of that country, which comprises a folio of nearly 1000 pages, and was published in 1843, use the following very appropriate language: "We feel, in fact, that a census ought to be a social survey, not a bare enumeration."

In connection with the population of England, they have published many large folio volumes, containing maps of all the counties and boroughs in the kingdom. In other portions of Europe, the same expanded view is taken of what should constitute a statistical work.

The European statistical publications, in point of execution, far exceed our own, which have heretofore been most inconvenient and unwieldy volumes. The only volumes in its possession, which the shelves of the royal library of Belgium are not adapted to hold, are those of our last census, which have occupied a place on the floor, beneath the shelves, for several years. The inconvenient shape of these volumes has led to their destruction, and almost entire extermination. Their extreme rarity, at this time, leads me to believe that they have, in many instances, unfortunately, been used as so much waste paper, not esteemed worth the room they occupied.