Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 8.djvu/162



intend in this article to write of the material condition of the people of Massachusetts. In detail we shall treat of the number of the people; of their marriages, their births, and their deaths; then also of the property of the people; of idiocy, insanity, blindness, and sickness; of the means of education, and the means for the repression of crime. At the end of all we shall offer some hints as moral, not to a fable, but to a fact. For convenience' sake, we put the statistics into tables, apples of gold in vessels of silver.

I. .—On the first day of June, 1855, there were in Massachusetts 1,132,369 persons. To-day the number is doubtless greater; but let it be considered as still the same.

1. They are thus divided in respect to race:—9767 are black men, of the African race; whereof 6923 are pure negroes, 2844 are mixed. 139 are red men, of the American or Indian race: of these, six only are pure Indian, the rest are mixed with the blood of other races. This is the poor remnant of the great savage population