proclaim their wants the blessings of in- respecting the colored blind existed struction. In addition to its beneficent with the last census, as has been shown effects upon the afflicted, the information to exist respecting the deaf and dumb. thus imparted would furnish many inter- We present a table giving the numbers esting details, useful in a practical point and proportions of the deaf and dumb, of view. The method of deaf mute in- blind, insane, and idiotic, among the struction was introduced from Europe white, free colored and slaves, respectivethirty-five years ago. To study into the ly. From this table it will be seen that improvements effected there within that muteness and insanity are more prevatime, institutions in this country have lent among the whites, and blindness sent, at different periods, commissioners and idiocy among the colored. Among into different portions of Europe, and the the white population there appears to be result of their investigations appears to one blind person for each 2,445 persons; have led to the conclusion, "that in the among the free colored, one to each 870; matter of intellectual instruction we have and among the slaves, one to each very little to learn from European schools; 2,645. while in the very important point of religious instruction they are painfully inferior." An analysis with respect to native and foreign population, made from the returns, by Harvey P. Peet, LL. D., presents the fact that the blind and insane are much more numerous among our foreign population, which he attributes to "homesickness, change of climate, and the various hardships of an emigrant's lot," which have a strong influence in inducing insanity, and perhaps blindness. F. CL'D. SLAVES. WHITES. M. F. M. 279 254 3 F. Aggre- 536 188 197 Vermont 276 276 Massachusetts 781 848 10 791 107 300 1,739 426 1,448 125 3 74 59 39 577 4 80 36 28 7 32 210 173 3 108 2 102 854 849 1,399 190 919 371 The Insane and Idiotic-Education-Pauperism. 135 institutions of the country on the first of June, 1850, or at the rate of one in every five free persons. The teachers number more than 115,000, and the colleges and schools near 100,000. We will endeavor to furnish, in a few weeks, a detailed statement of the condition of the American people as respects education, to which time it will be proper to defer extended remarks. INSANE AND IDIOTIC.-The number of insane persons in the United States is given at 15,768-of whom 15,156 are whites, 321 free colored, and 291 slaves. The number of idiots returned is 15,706, distributed as follows: whites, 14,230; free colored, 436; slaves, 1,040. Total insane and idiotic, 31,474. Total whites, 29,386; total blacks, 2,086. By the census of 1840, these two classes of persons were returned together, (although not generally so understood,) and presented the following numbers: white insane and idiotic, 14,508; colored insane and idiotic, 2,926-total, 17,434. The returns make it appear that, with the white population in the United States there exists one insane person for each 1,290 individuals; among the free co- By the table annexed to this report lored, one to each 1,338; and among it will be perceived that the whole numthe slaves, one to each 11,010. With ber of persons who have received the respect to idiocy, the white population benefit of the public funds of the difpresents one to each 1,374 persons; the free colored, one to each 985; and among the slaves, one to each 3,080. PAUPERISM.-No state in the Union is without its legal provisions for the protection and support of the indigent population. In many states they receive a care and attention which places them in an enviable condition compared with some of the laboring classes of other countries. ferent states for the relief of indigent persons, amounts to 134,972. Of this number there were 68,538 of foreign birth, and 66,434 Americans, while of the whole number receiving support on the first day of June, there were 36,916 natives, and 13,437 foreigners, making a total of 50,353 persons. Of those termed Americans, many are free persons of color. The entire cost of the support of these individuals during the year has amounted to $2,954,806. This aggregate may seem startling to persons who have paid but little attention to pauper statistics in our own and other countries; and it may be useful, and perhaps not amiss, to compare these facts with results as they are officially developed abroad. Want of time will not permit a sufficiently detailed examination to arrive at the causes which present these unfortunate beings in such greater number than they appeared in 1840. From the manner of taking the census of 1850, they could not be rated higher than their actual numbers; and it follows, therefore, that the returns in 1840 must have been deficient, or that an error occurred in placing the figures in the tables. A more particular examination of both sets of returns will be made, previous to the printing of the seventh census, in which it is hoped the discrepancy will be satisfactorily explained. Throughout our In 1818, about $39,000,000, and during country increased attention is being the years 1832, '33, and '34, more than paid to the amelioration of the condition $100,000,000 was expended for the reof this class of our population, a feeling lief and maintenance of the poor of Engkept in active operation, and made to land and Wales, exclusive of the imyield continually practical fruits, mainly mense expenditure of the poor-law adthrough the instrumentality and devoted ministration in the unions and parishes. zeal of one American lady, whose In 1842 and '43, the amount of $50,000,reputation is not limited, and whose 000, and during each of the years 1847, influence is not confined to her native '48, and '49, there was expended $28,country. 500,000 in England and Wales. EDUCATION.-It was intended to accompany this report with a tabular statement presenting the statistics of education in the United States. We are compelled to defer such table to a future period for want of time to complete it. It may be satisfactory to state that near 4,000,000 youth were receiving instruction in the various educational The entire number of paupers relieved by the public funds in England and Wales for nine years, from 1840 to 1848 inclusive, amounted to 13,193,425, equal to 1,649,178 persons per annum. In 1848, the number relieved was 1,876,541, by which it appears that one person in every eight was a pauper. The average number of those annually relieved, who are represented to have been "adult and able-bodied paupers," amounted to more than 477,000; and it is, on British authority, asserted that in 1848 more than 2,000,000 persons in England and Wales were kept from starvation by relief from public and private sources. The total public expenditure for the poor in England and Ireland in 1848, amounted to $42,750,000. Within the past seventeen years, the poor-law fund expended in England and Wales amounted to $426,600,000. This enormous expenditure, accompanied as it is by immense private contributions, falls far short of relieving the wants of the poor of Great Britain. While her population embraces a large number of persons of princely estates, and other classes composed of individuals of every variety of income, combining with it ease, comfort, and elegance, the statistics of the nation prove that the substratum of pauperism or want is of a magnitude alarming to the English moralist and thinker, as well as the statesman, and of an extent and nature harrowing to all. The expenses of the organized benevolent institutions of France amounted, in 1847, to 52,000,000 francs. The number of distressed persons ed amounted to about 450,000 annually. We have no means of arriving approximately at the number of paupers in France, as the institutions above referred to are confined to the cities and large towns, while among the rural communes, which contain several millions of landed proprietors, there are large numbers of persons in the receipt of reliev Arkansas. 6.858 ART. V.-SHALL THE VALLEYS OF THE AMAZON AND THE MISSISSIPPI RECIPROCATE TRADE? THE subject of South American trade, and especially that of the great empire of the Amazon, has been pressed by us in the Review, through the able pen of Lieut. Maury and others, with zeal and earnestness for many months past, and now that Congress is in session, we cannot allow the matter to flag. The following contribution presents many additional views which are new and striking, and deserving of serious consideration: this great Amazonian water-shed are to be developed, and the measures and steps which the policy of commerce suggests for securing to the world the free navigation of the Amazon. The triumphs of commerce are peaceful; its achievements are seen in the spreading of civilization, in the march of civil and religious freedom, and in the dispensation of thrift, prosperity, and wealth among nations, as well as to individuals. We now come to consider the means From the statements which I have aland modes by which the resources of ready made, all must admit that the Free Navigation of La Plata-Fertility of Upper Amazon. 137 valley of the Amazon is not only a great Amazon and La Plata, be considered country, but it is a glorious wilderness rapid traveling. Here, therefore, is the and waste which, under the improve- commencement of a new era in the ment and progress of the age, would business and the commerce of those two soon be made to "blossom as the rose." river-basins; and the first merchantWe have, therefore, but to let loose upon steamer, as she plows up those majesit the engines of commerce-the steam- tic streams with her rich cargo of forer, the emigrant, the printing-press, the eign merchandise, will be the signal for axe and the plow-and it will teem with a revolution in the trade and traffic life. which has been carried on there. Three millions of dollars' worth of produce now comes down the Amazon to Para. "The Peruvian portion of the Upper There is a line of steamers from England to Rio. The French are getting up a line, and the stock has been taken in it, from Marseilles to Rio. Brazil has a line from the mouth of the Rio de la Plata, via Rio, to the mouth of the Ama- Amazon" where this line of steamers is zon. The mouth of the Amazon is half to go, "is," said Castelnau, who was then on his way home, after traveling way between Norfolk and Rio. I petitioned Congress, at its last session, for through the fairest parts of South Amerithe establishment of a line of mail- ca, "the most beautiful country in the steamers from some one of our southern is found the famous silk tree, which proworld; its fertility is proverbial." There ports to connect with the Brazilian line duces a staple like cotton to the eye, at Para, and thus put our merchants in but silk to the touch. There the labor direct steamship communication with Rio, Buenos Ayres and Montevideo, and so draw us closer to the Amazon. The committee to whom the subject was referred reported in favor of it, and brought in a bill for its accomplishment. It was, however, not acted upon. But since that, events have occurred which make this line from the south still more important and necessary. The tyrant Rosas has been expelled from the continent; the navigation of the Rio de la Plata and some of its noblest tributaries have been opened and made free to the world. This government, with a most praiseworthy zeal, is fitting out a naval expedition to explore those streams, and to make known their navigability and the commercial resources of the countries drained by them, that our merchants may know how to send, what to sell, and what to buy there. Brazil has contracted for two lines of steamers on the Amazon, from its mouth almost up to its sources. These Amazonian lines are to run-one monthly between Para and Barra, at the mouth of the Rio Negro, a distance of nine hundred miles; the other, connecting with this at Barra, is to ply between that city and Nauta, in Peru, a distance of near three thousand miles from the sea. "Poling up the Mississippi" would, in comparison to the means at present employed for navigating the waters of the of one man is worth but two and a half yards of our coarse cotton stuff the month-so abundant are the fruits of the earth, so scarce the fabrics of the shop been removed from the influences of and loom, and so far has that country commerce. It is now just about to be brought within them. But what are the opportunities which Americans will have for getting a fair share of this new business to which the free navigation of the La Plata and the introduction of steam upon the Amazon will give rise? I reply, very small, unless this southern line of steamers to the Amazon be established; otherwise all the intelligence from Brazil and the La Plata, all the advices concerning the markets, will go direct to England and to France by their steamers; and then, after the merchants there shall have had some ten days or two weeks the start of their American competitors in taking advantage of that intelligence, it will arrive here in the United States by the Cunard or Collins line of steamers from Liverpool. Now and then an American clipper, happening at the mouth of the river, or in the offing at Rio, at the night time, may chance to bring intelligence to the United States sooner than it can go to Europe and then come over by steamer. But that is uncertain. The free navigation of the Rio de la Plata is an achievement, and commerce is chiefly indebted to Brazil for it. Honor to Brazil, therefore. It is a gem in the crown of the emperor, which, if it be tarnished not, will make his reign illustrious. Rosas held the mouth of the river La Plata; Brazil, Banda-Oriental, Paraguay, and Bolivia, (all independent sovereignties,) owned navigable water-courses which emptied into it; but Rosas would not allow any of these powers to follow those waters through his part of the river to the sea. Brazil made war with him, drove him out of the country, and the first-fruits of the victory the commercial world is about to receive, is the free navigation of those noble streams. With a quarrel more just than that wicked one about opium, Brazil, in her triumph, followed the generous example of England in opening the ports of China, without any claim to exclusive privileges. Brazil has not opened the ports of so populous a country as China, but she has opened the water-courses of one with which commerce will in a few years be more valuable than it is with China. These arrangements about the La Plata navigation are not completed. They are thought to be in a fair way of adjustment; and, therefore, in giving honor to whom honor is due, I give it to the Emperor of Brazil, upon the supposition that no untoward thing will occur to thwart the measure. But the commercial world has been sparing of its commendations of Brazil for her seeming liberality with regard to the free navigation of the La Plata. They say and have, alas! but too much reason for saying-that there was no generosity, no liberality, no sign of any fairness whatever, in the course of Brazil with regard to the navigation of the La Plata. Bolivia, Paraguay, and Banda-Oriental, they say, had each as much right as Brazil to claim the free use of the La Plata for getting to sea with their merchandise; and if, upon the fall of Rosas, Brazil had then attempted to extort from Buenos Ayres any exclusive privilege in the use of those waters, she knew that not only would these republics-her next-door neighbors all have turned against her, but that the three great commercial nations of the north would have stepped in to prevent any such exclusive and selfish appropriation of Nature's highway. As a proof that Brazil was not actuated by any of those really enlarged and liberal views which it is the policy of commerce to carry out, I point to the Amazon. There Don Pedro is the Rosas. He holds the mouth of the Amazon; he shuts it up. Five sovereign and independent nations own its headwaters, and all of them have provinces and people upon the banks of its navigable tributaries; but not one of them is allowed to follow the course of these navigable streams through Brazilian waters to the sea. Justice, the policy of commerce, the sentiment of the age, all the principles of national law and the rights of people, are in favor of the free use of that river by those five Spanish republics: and it cannot be said that Brazil acted from principle in the case of the La Plata until she makes, of her own accord, the navigation of the Amazon free. Formerly there was a Rosas who threatened to stand at the mouth of our Mississippi, and we, who then owned the headwaters only, claimed, and were ready to assert with the sword, our right to follow them, and to use them for commerce and navigation, until they mingled with and were lost in the sea. It has now not been quite four years ago since this subject of the free navigation of the La Plata and the Amazon was brought to the attention of this gov ernment. The proposition was, that we should offer to Brazil our friendly mediation with Rosas, and use our kind offices to induce him to make free the navigation of the La Plata, and so end the war. It was proposed, also, that we should treat with Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, New Grenada, and Venezuela, for ports of entry to foreign vessels and commerce up their navigable tributaries of the Amazon, and thus turn upon Brazil with the same arguments for the free naviga tion of the Amazon that Brazil stood ready to urge in favor of her right to navigate the La Plata. Brazil got wind of this. She found out that such a thing as the free navigation of the Amazon began to form the subject of conversation in commercial and political circles here, and she im mediately took the most active steps to render of no avail any attempt on our part having for its object the free navigation of the Amazon. |