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.