greater auring a time when the sexes were separated than when they were united. Taking the corrected figures of 1870, as made by the Superintendent, and leaving out immigration, the rate of increase from 1860 to 1870 is 19.38 per cent. Here is still a spasmodic fall from 24.45 to 19.38 per cent., though the diminution of the rate was less than two per cent. in the preceding decade. The rate of increase from 1870 to 1880 is reduced by Mr. Porter's corrections to 18.89 per cent., which is as much too small as the other is too large. From 18.89 in 1880 Mr. Porter plunges to 13.32 in 1890. Thus the diminution of the rate has changed suddenly from one half of one per cent. to five and a half per cent. It is plain that his corrected statement does not extricate the Superintendent from the position in which he is placed by his enumerators. It may be true that the census in South Carolina was defective in 1870, and perhaps it may have been so to a small extent in some of the other southern States. The non-enumerated in all of them were not more than half a million. Now if we take the census of 1870, and add 500,000 for those omitted and 2,000,000 for the loss of life and the retardation of increase caused by the war, we shall have the following rates of increase, immigrants being omitted:

Thus it is evident that whether we take Mr. Porter's figures without any allowance for the war, or with the effects of the war added, they by no means account for the apparent loss of population, which has been, as shown by him, greater during the decade just ended than it was during the decade of hospitals, prison pens, and battlefields. The percentage of 1890, to be in harmony with the whole line of preceding decades, except that of the war, should have been nearly 20, which would have given us a total population of 65,000,000 or 66,000,000. It is said that the very low rate of increase, as shown by the census of

1870, in Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee, proves that their populations had not been correctly taken. Does not that record point rather to the terrible results of war? For nearly half that decade almost all the males of the white race who were able to bear arms were in the field, and thousands of them perished. Did it ever occur to Mr. Porter that vast numbers of them fled with their slaves before the advancing armies of the United States and took refuge in Florida and Texas? He did not embrace these two States among those whose populations he says were not enumerated correctly. Texas showed in 1870 an increase of 35.48 per cent., and Florida one of 33.70. It is strange that while their sister States of the South were neglected by the enumerators, they fared so well. Each showed a greater increase than any one of the New England States, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Ohio, or Indiana, and was about 13 per cent. above the average of all the other States. Mr. Porter thinks that the low rates of increase reported for Kentucky and Tennessee in 1870 prove that they were neglected in the census of that year. But, though they had 500,000 men in the field during four years of the preceding decade, their population increased at the rate of 14.30 per cent., while during 1880-90, when all their citizens were at home, it increased, according to the recent census, at the rate of only 13.65 per cent. If an increase of 14.30 per cent. in time of war is so low as to justify the conclusion that they were neglected then, what conclusion is to be drawn from the lower rate of 13.65 in a time of profound peace and undisturbed prosperity? If they went without proper representation in Congress then, what is the outlook now? There is no room to doubt that the census was substantially correct then, and that their increase of 23.70 per cent. in 1870-80 was the natural result of peace and of the return of soldiers to their homes. But who can account for their fearful leap backward in 1890? The small increase of the colored population in the South was attributable to the same cause that hindered the growth of the white population. Many thousands of them were enlisted in the armies of the United States, and many thousands more were attached to the armies in different capacities. The

same cause that reduced the rate of increase among the whites reduced it among the blacks. It is possible that South Carolina and some others of the southern States may have been underestimated in 1870, but they have fared worse under the census of 1890. It is strange that a gentleman of Mr. Porter's intelligence should wholly ignore the war as a factor in reducing the rate of increase of population of "the fire-girt circle." He seems to be oblivious of the fact that the country of which he speaks was the theater for four years of the most gigantic war that has ever occurred in the world. He is mistaken in his assumptions; it was not the census of 1870, but the one of 1890, that caused the discrepancy.

The statistics of scholastic population taken in the different States of the Union show that the census of 1890 is not correct. The children of school age are enumerated by officers appointed under the authority of the State governments. Their number is annually reported at Washington, and from the rate of annual increase of those within given ages the total population of each State can be closely calculated. I am informed by the Commissioner of Education that there were in Texas in 1880, 311,567 children between the ages of eight and sixteen years; that the children between those ages increased between 1880 and 1890 at the rate of 86.4 per cent.; and that the population of the State in 1890, if the whole increased in the same ratio, should have been 2,966,000. The census gives us 2,235,523. Here is a loss of about 700,000. Why should not the whole population have increased at something like the same rate? That four fifths of the people increased at about the same rate that one fifth did, can hardly admit of a doubt, and one or the other of these returns must be incorrect. If all between the ages of eight and sixteen years have increased 86.4 per cent., the rate for the whole State must have been more than 40.44. These two returns are too far apart. One or the other is wrong. Either the school census has been padded, or the federal census has failed properly to enumerate the people. To suppose the first to be true, is to suppose the school enumerators guilty of fraud. But there could be no motive for perpetrating such a fraud. There was no money to be made by a fraudulent school census.

There was no party advantage to be gained. We must suppose that the children were in existence and that they were properly returned. If this is true, the federal enumeration is wrong. The result may have been produced by the neglect or incompetency of the enumerators or of others charged with the work. I state facts, and leave others to draw conclusions from them as they may. But whatever those conclusions may be, the State of Texas is deprived, by the incorrect returns, of at least three representatives in Congress and three votes in the electoral college. Estimating the total population by the same ratio of increase of children within given ages, Alabama loses 240,000, Tennessee and North Carolina 170,000 each, and Virginia, Kentucky, and Louisiana 100,000 each. In the States of the North and West the federal census exceeds the school census by about 800,000, while in those of the South the school census exceeds the federal census by 1,500,000. If we assume that in each State and Territory the highest number is approximately the true number, which I believe to be the case, the whole population of the United States is in the neighborhood of 65,000,000.

ROGER Q. MILLS.

WILL MORALITY SURVIVE RELIGION?

WE learn that the year's earnings of a great telegraph company were sensibly increased by the Birchall affair. Thus was confirmed the saying that nothing else gives a community so much pleasure as a murder, except a case of clerical crim. con. But apart from the popular sensation of the crime and the trial, an ethical interest attaches to the character of this man, who, when he was not twenty-four, mounted the scaffold for a singularly cold-blooded and deliberate murder. Birchall was a perfect specimen of the moral, as well as of the religious, agnostic. As he was the son of a clergyman and had been well brought up, he must have been thoroughly enlightened, and cannot have been led into crime by anything like the brutal ignorance of moral law which is often the heritage of the gutter child. Nor does it seem that evil passion of any kind was overpoweringly strong in him. The attempts of the enemies of capital punishment to make out a case of moral insanity were in this case more faint than usual. It even appears that there was an amiable side to his character. His college companions liked him. He seems to have been a loving husband, and there was something touching and almost heroic in the effort which he suc cessfully made, while he was awaiting execution, to master the fear of death and to write his autobiography for the benefit of his wife. The autobiography, it is true, is nothing more than the vulgar record of a fast undergraduate's life at an inferior college; but this does not detract from the nerve shown in writing it, and in illustrating it with comic sketches, beneath the shadow of the gallows. He only happened to have occasion for his friend's money. It is possible that if Birchall, instead of being sent to college-where a youth of his stamp was sure to be idle, and, being idle, to become dissipated-had been set to regular work in an office under a strong chief, he might have gone decently through life, though he would have been a very