THE NINTH CENSUS.

SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, DECEMBER 16, 1869.

THE bill that passed the House of Representatives, April 6, 1869, had it become a law, would have been but a tentative measure. As amended, the bill provided for a Census Bureau with a Superintendent at its head; also for a joint committee of the two houses, composed of the House committee already appointed and such committee as the Senate might add thereto, which committee was to investigate the whole subject in the recess of Congress, and to report by bill at the next session. The House bill having failed in the Senate, the House adopted this resolution: "Resolved, that the Committee on the Ninth Census shall have power to send for persons and papers and to examine witnesses, in order to ascertain the best method of taking the said Ninth Census, and for obtaining such other information concerning the population, industry, property, and resources of the country as they may think proper, for the purpose of rendering the census and statistics to be obtained forthwith correct and valuable. And said committee are hereby authorized to act during the recess of Congress through sub-committees, and shall report at the next session of Congress a bill for the taking of the census, with such schedules, forms, and directions as they may think best; and the Congressional Printer is hereby authorized to print such portions of the evidence and such documents as said committee may require during the recess, in order that their report may be made in print at the commencement of the next session of Congress."

In the recess a sub-committee, with Mr. Garfield at its head, thoroughly investigated the whole subject, and the first day of the next session a bill was reported "for taking the Ninth Census of the United States, to fix the number of the members of the House of Representatives, and to provide for their future apportionment among the several States." After lengthy and thorough discussion, the House, having first struck out those parts relating to the number of Representatives and their apportionment among the States, as well as made some minor

changes, passed the bill, December 16. The title, amended to suit the changes made in the bill, was, "A Bill to provide for taking the Ninth Census of the United States." The following is the speech with which Mr. Garfield closed the debate in the House. The Senate tabled the bill after a spirited debate.

Although defeated in 1870, Mr. Garfield's attempt to secure an improved census law was exceedingly fruitful in results that may be here mentioned.

First, it secured some immediate modifications of the law of 1850, the effect of which was to make the census of 1870 more valuable than it would otherwise have been.

Second, it called out a large amount of census literature. The documents published under the direction of the Census Committee were as follows: "Ninth Census of the United States," 48 pages, consisting of letters addressed to the committee by various authorities and experts; "Constitutional Provisions of States with Reference to a Census as the Basis of Representation in their Legislatures," 9 pages; "Provisions of the National and State Constitutions and Laws relating to the Right of Suffrage," 36 pages; and the "Report of the Census Committee," submitted January 18, 1870, 120 pages. This report was prepared under the immemediate direction of Mr. Garfield, and much of it was from his own hand. To some extent it includes the ground covered by the former documents. All in all, this report is to-day the best census manual that has yet appeared. What is more, out of those studies grew the article entitled "Census," in Johnson's Cyclopædia. Touching this report and article, Mr. S. S. Cox. said, in the House of Representatives, February 18, 1879: "The exhaustive Report No. 3, Forty-first Congress, made by the gentleman from Ohio, on the 18th of January, 1870, makes it unnecessary for me to collate the history connected with statistical observation. Even if that report were not in existence, the comprehensive article in Johnson's Encyclopædia, by the same distinguished gentleman, would furnish all the information necessary to understand the history of the census, from the beginning of civilization down to and including our own country."

Third, that attempt led to the law under which the census of 1880 was taken. This excellent law was little more than a transcript of Mr. Garfield's bill of ten years before. Mr. Cox, who had the management of the bill of 1880 in the House, speaking of the law of 1850, said: "Indeed, it was confessed by those who prepared that bill, that it was but a trial. Its framers hoped for larger and more liberal legislation in future. In so far as this House is concerned, they gave that legislation in 1870, and the Senate last week has shown its disposition to substitute another law, not unlike ours, for that of 1850."

Mr. Garfield's minor speeches and incidental remarks on the bills of 1870 and of 1880 will be found full of valuable information and useful

thought. The pamphlet entitled, "The American Census, a Paper read before the American Social Science Association, at New York, October 27, 1869, by James A. Garfield," is substantially the same as the following speech. Here are the "materials " referred to below.

"Statistics are History in repose; History is Statistics in motion."-SCHLOSSER.

MR. Thas to

R. SPEAKER, - The protracted and patient attention which the House has given to this bill during the last seven days is the best evidence that could be offered of the deep interest felt in the subject; and the fact that no leading feature of the bill as introduced by the committee has been changed by the House is a strong assurance that the House approves of the work of the committee. I now beg leave to present a brief review of the bill in its present shape, as compared with the old law, and will also venture to ask the indulgence of the House in the presentation of some general considerations on the subject of the census as a leading instrument of modern civilization. In doing so I shall take the liberty of using some materials which I have used elsewhere, in discussing the general subject.

The modern census is so closely related to the science of statistics, that no general discussion of it is possible without considering the principles on which statistical science rests, and the objects which it proposes to reach. The science of statistics is of recent date, and, like many of its sister sciences, owes its origin to the best and freest impulses of modern civilization. The enumerations of inhabitants and the appraisements of property made by some of the nations of antiquity were practical means employed sometimes to distribute political power, but more frequently to adjust the burdens of war; but no attempt was made among them to classify the facts obtained, so as to make them the basis of scientific induction. The thought of studying these facts to ascertain the wants of society had not then dawned on the human mind, and of course there was not a science of statistics in the modern sense.

It is never easy to fix the precise date of the birth of any science, but we may safely say that statistics did not enter upon its scientific phase before 1749, when it received from Professor Achenwall, of Göttingen, not only its name, but the first com

prehensive statement of its principles. Without pausing to trace the stages of its growth, some of the results of the cultivation of statistics in the spirit and methods of science may be stated as germane to this discussion.

I. It has developed the truth that society is an organism, whose elements and forces conform to laws as constant and pervasive as those which govern the material universe; and that the study of these laws will enable man to ameliorate his condition, to emancipate himself from the cruel dominion of superstition, and from countless evils which were once thought beyond his control, and will make him the master, rather than the slave, of nature.

Mankind have been slow to believe that order reigns in the universe, that the world is a cosmos, and not a chaos. The assertion of the reign of law has been stubbornly resisted at every step. The divinities of heathen superstition still linger, in one form or another, in the faith of the ignorant; and even many intelligent men shrink from the contemplation of one Supreme Will acting regularly, not fortuitously, through laws beautiful and simple, rather than through a fitful and capricious Providence. Lecky tells us that, in the early ages, it was believed that the motion of the heavenly bodies, as well as atmospheric changes, were effected by angels. In the Talmud a special angel was assigned to every star and every element, and similar notions were general throughout the Middle Ages. The scientific spirit has cast out the demons, and presented us with Nature, clothed and in her right mind, and living under the reign of law. It has given us for the sorceries of the alchemist the beautiful laws of chemistry; for the dreams of the astrologer, the sublime truths of astronomy; for the wild visions of cosmogony, the monumental records of geology; for the anarchy of diabolism, the laws of God.

But more stubborn still has been the resistance to every attempt to assert the reign of law in the realm of society. In that struggle statistics has been the handmaid of science, and has poured a flood of light upon the dark questions of famine and pestilence, ignorance and crime, disease and death. We no longer hope to predict the career and destiny of a human. being by studying the conjunction of planets at the time of his birth. We study rather the laws of life within him, and the ele

1 Rationalism in Europe, Vol. I. p. 289 (New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1866).

ments and forces of nature and society around him. We no longer attribute the untimely death of infants to the sin of Adam, but to bad nursing and ignorance. We are beginning to acknowledge that

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

Men are only beginning to recognize these truths. In 1853 the Presbytery of Edinburgh petitioned the British ministry to appoint a day of national fasting and prayer, in order to stay the ravages of cholera in Scotland. Lord Palmerston, the Home Secretary, replied in a letter which, a century before, no British statesman would have dared to write. He told the clergy of Scotland, that, the plague being already upon them, activity was preferable to humiliation; that the causes of disease should be removed by improving the abodes of the poor, and cleansing them " from those causes and sources of contagion which, if allowed to remain, will infallibly breed pestilence and be fruitful in death, in spite of all the prayers and fastings of a united but inactive nation." Henry Thomas Buckle expressed the belief that this letter would be quoted in future ages as a striking illustration of the progress of enlightened public opinion.1 But that further progress is possible is seen in the fact that, within the last three years, an English Bishop has attributed the rinderpest to the Oxford Essays and the writings of Colenso. In these remarks, I disclaim any reference to the dominion of the Creator over his spiritual universe, and the high and sacred duty of all his intelligent creatures to reverence and worship him. I speak solely of those laws that relate to the physical, intellectual, and social life of man.

2. The developments of statistics are causing history to be rewritten. Till recently, the historian studied nations in the aggregate, and gave us only the story of princes, dynasties, sieges, and battles. Of the people themselves—the great social body, with life, growth, forces, elements, and laws of its own - he told us nothing. Now, statistical inquiry leads him into the hovels, homes, workshops, mines, fields, prisons, hospitals, and all other places where human nature displays its weakness and its strength. In these explorations he discovers the seeds of national growth and decay, and thus becomes the

1 See History of Civilization in England, Vol. II. pp. 465-467 (New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1867).