pared with that of 1858 upon a nearly equal principal, in part by the expiry of terminable annuities, charged as interest, and in part by the reduced rate of interest on the floating debt in the latter year; bank interest ranging through the fiscal year 1858 at 5 to 10 per cent, and in the year ending March, 1863, at 2 to 3 per cent., and in the money-market falling from 12 per cent. in the former to 6 and 5 in the latter; besides, 5,000,000 of Exchequer bonds outstanding in 1858 were reduced to £418,300 in 1863.

These statements are made to caution the reader against authors who report the debt and charge from official summaries. Upon turning from such tabular statements to the account of annual expenditure published under the same official sanction, it will be found that the amount of the annual charge sometimes varies as much as £2,000,000.

6. United States debt and interest. Our debt is official for every period stated. For 1863 it is given as it stood on the books of the Treasury on the 1st of October. It is treated in the other columns of the table as chargeable upon the people and property of the loyal States only. And the annual interest stated is the amount which the principal would carry for the year ending October 1, 1864, if the principal remained so long unchanged. The proportion of this interest to the annual income of the year, is stated at 1 per cent. This would be true if the annual income of the people were correctly given; but if, as we suppose, this is put down at two-thirds of its real amount, the burden of interest upon the people's income would be something less than nine-tenths of 1 per cent.

The proportion of the total debt of the United States to the private property of the loyal States, stated at 84 per cent. nearly, means that the value of our property in 1863, at the prices ruling before the rebellion, if standing at the amount given in the property-column twenty years hence, or at

the maturity of the debt, would be as $100 to $8.77 of debt, and takes no account of the enhancement of our wealth in the mean time. What that shall be when the debt is to be reimbursed, cannot now be foretold or even imagined. If it shall increase during the two next decennial periods following the year 1863, at the rate of the period between 1850 and 1860, the sum will be above 70,000,000,000, or double the present computed value of Great Britain and Ireland; and a debt of 2,000,000,000 would then be less than 3 per cent. upon the principal of the wealth pledged for its ultimate discharge, while the burden of its interest upon the annual income of the country would be lessened in corresponding proportion.

If we take the estimated wealth of Great Britain to be equally underrated in 1816 and in 1858, we see how the burden of national debt declines relatively to the value of the property which must pay it. In these forty-two years the incumbrance fell from 40 to 13 per cent, of the national wealth, while the capital of the debt was reduced less than 3,000,000 on 4,200,000,000, or the burden fell from 40 to 13, while the debt fell only as from 40 to 37, or, in other words, the debt of 1858 would have been a charge of 374 per cent. on the property of 1816, but was only 13.4 per cent. of the property of 1858. The debt of the United States in 1816 was a charge of 7 per cent. on the property of that day; in 1860 it would have been no more than nine-tenths of 1 per cent.; and a debt of 1,222,000,000, which is 8 per cent. of the computed wealth of the loyal States in 1863, would, at a rate of increase in valuation in the next twenty years no greater than occurred in the last ten years, sink to 1 per cent.

Our tabular statement, with these hints, is submitted as a study in financial statistics. Exhaustive tabulation is a sort of cross-harrowing of the subject, which is its best and most searching exploration, and the best method of getting at the use and value of the data.

The increase of the total population of the United States in the ten years, 1850-60, was 35.52 per cent. of the total population of the free States, 41.62 per cent.; of the loyal States, 40.22 per cent.; of the total population of the rebel States, 25.37 per cent.: of the free population of the rebel States, 26.32 per cent.; of the slave population of the rebel States, 23.5 per cent.; of the whole slave population of the Union, 23.38 per cent.; and of the total free colored population, 12.3 per cent.

The increased value of the property of the United States in the same period (1850-1860) was 129.7 per cent.-of the property of the free States, 124.52 per cent.; of the loyal slave States, 132.04 per cent.; of the rebel slave States, 139.76. (The value of the slaves in neither case included.) The greater increased per cent. of the wealth of the slave than of the free States, in the decade, is mainly attributable to the quantity of cotton produced in the period, and the price it commanded. From 1840 to 1850, the exports of cotton to foreign countries were valued at $533,000,000, and at an average of 7.7 cents per pound; in the period 1850 to 1860, the exports amounted to $1,236,000,000, at an average of 10 cents per pound. To this must be added their exports of tobacco, rice, and breadstuffs and provisions, and the amount of all these articles sold to the Northern States. But to understand the value of this

greater increase as expressed in percentage, it must be recollected that the capital wealth of the rebel States in 1850 was but $2,289,000,000, slaves included, while that of the loyal States was $4,846,000,000,--the latter having increased their capital $6,050,000,000, the former but $2,913,000,000, -the Census valuation of the slaves being embraced in these aggregates. But the character of this enhanced wealth is also a matter of prime importance in estimating its worth as a measure and index of prosperity. The real estate of the rebel States, as reported by the marshals in 1860, was 43 per cent, and the personal 57 per cent. of their property; while in the loyal States the real was 66 per cent., and the personal but 34. The average ratio of real to personal estate in New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, is 75 per cent. of the total, or against, the average of the rebel States. South Carolina, Georgia, and North Carolina have but 30 per cent. of their wealth in real estate, and 70 in personal. The proportion of fixed to floating capital in a nation is the truest measure of its real wealth and of its grade of civilization. Among savages land is worth little, and its improvements nothing; real property scarcely exists. In the highest civilization and greatest prosperity, real estate preponde rates, and its degree of excess over personal, measures and expresses the national welfare.

they can be proven to be clogs or hinderances, they are abolished, or substituted by others better adapted for the emergency. Our war is for National existence; and while no expense is spared in carrying out all its details, that which is involved in supplying the wants of the men is styled extravagance by no one.

The Commission has distributed clothing, concentrated food, fresh vegetables, stimulants, reading matter, etc., to the value of $7,000.000. This has been raised all through the land. It has come in gold and silver bars from California and Nevada, in contributions from patriotic Americans living abroad, and from the aged sires, anx ious mothers, and warm-hearted sisters of the soldiers now toiling in the field. Little sewing circles, in villages, have reckoned it a great privilege to contribute their mite to the soldier, and have consigned it to the Commission with full confidence that it would reach some one whose needs it would supply. The prayers of thousands have been poured forth in its behalf.

Our space prevents us giving more than a very brief outline of the modus operandi of this peculiar auxiliary to the great war. The work of the Commission is carried on under two general beads-Inspection and Relief. For the first, a corps of medical officers, known as Sanitary Inspectors, has been created, whose members are distributed through all the great Armies of the United States. Their business is to carry on a regular series of inspections of the troops and Hospitals, so as to keep the Chief of Inspection informed of their condition. In making these inspections, it is expected that they conferrectly with the officers in charge, and aid them, by advice, or otherwise, in any emergencies that may require such aid. Wherever defects occur, their business is especially to solicit remedial means from the officer directly in charge, and, if this source of relief fail, then to report the case to others higher in authority. They are not sent to pry out the weak points, but to aid in strengthening such. These duties, which may be called advisory and preventive, do not constitute the whole of the Inspector's duty. He has also scientific duties, comprising the collection of statistical data, the examination of local causes of disease, the effects of certain kinds of clothing, food, of long marches, etc., etc.,upon the men, and other subjects calling forth a bigh order of professional training.

The work of Relief is divided into two kinds, that which is rendered in accordance with the order of a medical officer, and that which is given directly to the soldier, separate from his command or hospital, and which is styled Special Relief. For the due execution of the first, the Commission has regular Special Relief Agents in every army, and others who visit hospitals likely to be in want of necessary articles. The people demand that no soldier suffer, if help can reach him. These Relief Agents are their ministers. They do not only visit comfortable hospitals in out-of-theway places of security, but live in the Army, and are found on the battle-field, as at the battle of Gettysburg, dispensing comforts, while the balls are whistling around the r heads. In some armies, an agent lives in each corps, is supplied with a large wagon, kept constantly full of such supplies as are needed in the field, and shares the hardships of the soldier's life. This plan is adopted in the Army of the Potomac, where, under the direction of Dr. Lewis H. Steiner, Chief

Inspector, and J. Warner Johnson, Field Super intendent, it has been quite successful. By con stant association with the officers of a corps, the agent becomes fully able to detect wants, and is enabled to satisfy them with the greatest prompt. ness and certainty.

The general purpose of the Special Relief work of the Commission is best set forth in the Report of the Special Relief Agent at Washington, made at one of the meetings of the Board:

1st. "To supply to the sick men of the newlyarrived regiments such medicines, food, and care as it is impossible for them to receive in the midst of the confusion, and with the unavoidable lack of facilities from their own officers. The men to be thus aided are those who are not so sick as to have a claim upon a general hospital, and yet need immediate care to guard them against serious sickness."

2d. To furnish suitable food, lodging, care and assistance, to men who are honorably discharged from service, sent from general hospitals, or from their regiments, but who are often delayed a day or more, sometimes many days, before they obtain their papers and pay."

3d. To communicate with distant regiments in behalf of discharged men whose certificates of disability, or descriptive lists, on which to draw their pay, prove to be defective;-the invalid poldiers, meantime, being cared for, and not exposed to the fatigue and risk of going in person to their regiments to have their papers corrected."

4th. "To act as the unpaid agent or attorney of discharged soldiers who are too feeble, or too utterly disabled, to present their own claim at the paymaster's office."

5th. To look into the condition of discharged men who assume to be without means to pay the expense of going to their homes, and to furnish the necessary means where we find the man is true, and the need real."

6th. To secure, to disabled soldiers, railroad tickets at reduced rates, and. through an agent at the railroad station, see that these men are not robbed or imposed upon by sharpers."

7th. To see that all men who are discharged and paid off do at once leave the city for their homes; or, in cases where they have been induced, by evil companions, to remain behind, to endeavor to rescue them, and see them started, with through tickets, to their own towns."

8th. To make reasonably clean and comfortable, before they leave the city, such discharged men as are deficient in cleanliness and clothes."

9th. "To be prepared to meet at once, with food or other aid, such immediate necessities as arise when sick men arrive in the city, in large numbers, from battle-fields or distant hospitals."

10th. To keep a watchful eye upon all soldiers who are out of hospitals, yet not in service, and give information to the proper authorities, of such soldiers as seem endeavoring to avoid duty, or to desert from the ranks."

In the business of the Special Relief Department, both East and West, are enlisted many energetic, whole-souled men and women, who take great pleasure in thus contributing to the needs of our men. There may be some persons who will cavil at this work. and who sneeringly ask, where are the officers of the Medical and other Departments, that such a work as this of Special Relief is required?

To meet such, Mr. Knapp thus speaks in the Report already alluded to: "The fact is simply

this: that while the Medical Department has made a larger and wiser provision for the sick and wounded than the world ever before saw; there is not, and cannot be, a minuteness of detail, and a waiting at every corner, to give to a fainting soldier a cup of water, such as friends at home, in their anxious love, ask for. Yet this work needs to be done, and, therefore, we, who are simply the people's heart and bounty, do the work. But if the Medical Department were to attempt it, in all its minutiae of detail, their power for their own hundred-fold greater work would be weakened in a way that would find no justification."

The Sanitary Commission has also a Hospital Directory, in which arrangements are made for supplying information relative to all patients in the Army Hospitals. This information is furnished gratuitously.

The statistical material collected from all parts of its work is submitted to proper discussion by an accomplished Actuary, and the results are

communicated, from time to time, to those for whose use such results are obtained.

A large number of monographs, on special subjects of interest to medical officers, have been prepared, so as to place, in the hands of the surgeon in the field, compendious epitomes of the most modern information, and these are gratuitously distributed.

The original organization of the Commission owes much to the first General Secretary, F. L. Olmsted, Esq., who labored with great zeal in its service. "Its officers now are working with a quiet enthusiasm, which could not be obtained for money, or any other reward; and every employee will find it a source of incalculable pleasure, in the future, that he once labored in its ranks, at the command of a great people, whose souls' heartiest wish and desire was, that no suffering should exist in the Army of the Union, that might be prevented by anything procurable through money or kind words."