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The extraordinary statements that have been made within the past six weeks, in relation to the quantity of gold in California, have had a manifest effect upon the business and money markets of the principal cities. We have copied into our present No. an official report upon this subject by Colonel Mason, of the Army, who is now on duty in California. To this Report are added some observations by the Rev. Mr. Colton, Chaplain in the Navy, whose statements are fully confirmed by numerous letters from respectable merchants and others residing in that part of the country. The effect of these well authenticated statements upon the commercial community has been instantaneous and wide. There is a press of people and of goods to the Far West, unprecedented in the annals of this country. On the 16th of December, there were no less than thirty-five ships loading at the port of New York alone for San Francisco and other ports on the coast of California and Oregon. At the same time, about fifteen at Philadelphia, eight at Boston, and nine at Baltimore, preparing for the same destination.

We must postpone to another number the considerations upon the important commercial and financial changes which will be produced in this country by the recent discovery of these gold mines. At present we observe a rise in nearly all kinds of stocks, including Bank, Railroad and Insurance stocks. Sales of the recent Government Loan have been effected since our last publication at 108, and 109 has been demanded. The Treasury Report gives assurance that no further loans will be required for the uses of the government, and that under the present state of public affairs, the existing public debt can be extinguished in a few years.

The Treasury Report for December, 1848, is one of the most copious and able that has emanated from the Treasury Department for many years. The statistical and other information contained in it, evince great labor and some enlightened views. The recommendation of extending our steam vessels and revenue vessels is worthy of great commendation.

The point in this Report to which we object the most is the Sub-Treasury scheme. Notwithstanding the zealous arguments of the Treasury in its favor, the system has been productive of much mischief, of considerable expense to the government, and most harassing inconvenience to merchants. During the year ending 30th June, 1848, the aggregate revenue of the government from all sources was fifty-six millions of dollars, of which we may assume that quite one-half was paid at New York City alone. An equal amount being expended at the same point would be equivalent to about one million per week. The payment of all this, or even one-half of it, in coin, is a very laborious, troublesome, vexatious and costly business.

We hope to see the government revenues and expenditures in a more rational shape hereafter. There is no more reason for confining the government operations to coin, than those of the mercantile community. The question is, what will facilitate the payments and re-payments between the government and its creditors; between one class of the community and another?

Why employ Sub-Treasurers at large salaries and with numerous subordinates, at vast labour, when one bank teller or other bank officer can with paper do the work of fifty men with coin in the same space of time? The Sub-Treasury is a dead weight upon the government to an amount not less than one hundred thousand dollars annually, and the inconveniences arising from it to commerce are innumerable.

If the government will insist upon a special and exclusive currency for itself, let it adopt the only convenient medium, a paper currency. The credit of the general government is at all times superior to that of banks and individuals, and it can sustain a circulation of fifty millions in treasury notes upon a basis of twenty millions of coin. Even if the same notes were not re-issued, (as is the case with the Bank of England, the financial agent of the British government,) the annual cost would be trifling.

Wherever a specie circulation mainly exists, commerce is trammelled and the people are in the dark. The case of France furnishes a forcible example of the heavy expense attending a metallic currency. The amount of the gold and silver in circulation in that country, was many years since estimated by Necker at 2,200 millions francs. Other competent authorities estimated it at 1,900 millions francs, or about 400 millions of dollars. This currency must cost France, unnecessarily, some twelve millions of dollars annually, in the loss of interest, exclusive of the wear and tear of coins. A better circulation could be maintained without any portion of this loss.

The Treasury Report adheres to "a view to augment the circulation of our own coin in our own country." The aggregate coinage at the mints from March, 1845, to March, 1849, will be in the aggregate about forty millions of dollars, being a larger sum than was coined from 1793 to 1830. The establishment of a branch mint at New York is recommended, and we hope Congress will carry out this measure.

The money market of this country will always be unsettled, our capitalists at a loss for safe investments, and our manufactures subject to severe fluctuations, as long as the present tariff system exists. This system induces heavy importations of foreign goods in competition with our own, when the welfare of the South and the North, and the East and the West, depends largely upon OUR HOME MARKET. Great Britain alone exported to the U. S., in the year 1847, manufactured goods to the amount of £10,974,161, (say fifty millions of dollars.) These manufactures are produced, where money is plenty at three per cent. per annum, and in a large measure by the pauper labor of that country. At this identical period, Great Britain levied a duty of twenty millions of dollars upon our exports of Tobacco, which cost at home about two millions.

Exchange on London 60 days 82 a 9 per cent.

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THE LAW OF POPULATION AND MORTALITY AS EVIDENCED IN THE HEALTH-REPORTS OF BALTIMORE, MD.

BY J. H. ALEXANDER, ESQ.

THE Laws which regulate the mortality of the human race, constitute a subject for enquiry of the most general and deepest interest to the individuals of that race; and a research into their modifications and applications in any particular community may be justly expected not only to excite the active curiosity of all who are amenable to them, but to carry with it also indications and results of a character not less weighty than a concern of the well-being and prolongation of life itself. For the natural effect of such a research, after defining the existence and extent of the actual mortality and developing the causes which tend to promote it, must be a suggestion of the antagonist means to be resorted to for its diminution; and as morálity and physical comforts in a community are the most efficient alteratives of the rate of mortality there, we have in this aspect of an investigation like the present, a wide foundation and a new stimulus for all the duties and efforts of benevolence and religion. I consult, therefore, my own taste as well as the interest and possibly the advantage of those who are subject with myself to a common law of Death, in instituting the enquiry and arranging the information that I have been able to collect.

It might seem at first that such collection would not imply any great difficulty to be encountered and overcome; and that the information easily acquired, would leave nothing to be desired for the solution of any question that might arise. But in point of fact, neither reflection nor experience shew this to be the case. Among all the functions imperfectly performed, not by our own Government especially, but all others, that of taking from time to time the census of their population is the most signal; and it is easy to see how inaccuracy in this-one of

the most important elements in the investigation-weakens both the spirit for and reliance upon subsequent deductions. It is not intended here, however, to indicate the inadequacy of the methods hitherto employed both in this country and elsewhere for taking the census, nor to speculate upon their probable improvement; it is enough to have referred to them. I have endeavored, by the nature and number of the combinations, to neutralize as far as possible the individual errors of the terms; and the accordant results given by different methods, may be regarded as not less reliable than the elements from which they were derived.

The inaccuracy in enumerating the actual population at any epoch is not attributable in the ascertainment of the current increase of such population; simply because no such ascertainment has been attempted. We have no register of Births. In other countries, that is to say among many of the European nations, this particular of essential importance in constructing Tables of Mortality, and serving in a stationary population where the annual increase by immigration is very small, as well as a check and test of the census-enumerations that are made at comparatively distant intervals-is arrived at by the register of Baptisms, which the secular or ecclesiastical laws of those countries require to be kept. With us, the latitude of religious opinion and belief precludes such a resort; for of the various religious societies here, some forbid a baptism except of adult parties altogether; only a few of those who prescribe it for infants, require their ministers to keep a regular list of the subjects of the rite; and still fewer present such lists by annual publication or otherwise, in a form accessible to a statistical inquirer. Under any circumstances, but especially under these, it would be not only competent but advisable for the secular Government to take this point-a registry of births-under its own provision and administration.

We are thrown, then, entirely (so far at least as the present field is concerned) upon Reports of Interments, which, when accurately ascertained, represent the annual decrease of the population. And in order to shew the character of these Reports, and to enable the reader to judge of the extent and reliability of the materials for information they afford, and of the appropriateness with which they have been applied to the present aim, I cannot do better than exhibit textually one of the very documents themselves. It is a report from the Board of Health, a mixed Directory of medical and lay-men under a resident Commissioner, of Interments in the City of Baltimore, from the first day of January, 1848, to the first day of January, 1849.

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To this is added a classification of the individuals by number according to the alphabetical order of the diseases to which they are supposed to have succumbed;-an aspect not bearing upon our aim at present, and which, therefore may be omitted here. I shall offer some remarks, however, upon its results hereafter.

The numbers interred are learned by a weekly inspection of the lists of burials kept by each of the sextons of the different graveyards (or rather congregations) of the city. Those who are not carried to one or other of these yards, rest in the potter's field-a public cemetery intended for strangers, and which is under the control of the municipal authorities; and their number can of course be given with precision. As a class is made of the colored population, and a very proper division made between the free and the slaves of that class, it is to be regretted that the distinction of sex is not noted, also. Such a distinction would allow us to calculate the comparative probabilities of female life for both races, which cannot, as it is, be done for either; and thus furnish additional information upon a point whose data have hitherto been very variant.

The distribution of the deceased according to their respective ages, is made upon statements of like origin with those that give the total numbers. The wide interval between the given epochs diminishes, of course, the chances of error in the positive number for each; in all other respects, it is disadvantageous, as will be seen among other things by the complicated and laborious process which becomes necessary for its interpolation.

Such being the state of the documentary information, there is necessary first as a preliminary to any application of it, a Table constructed upon the actual census-returns for every tenth year, which shall exhibit the population, year by year. It is admitted now, that the increase or decrease of population (as the case may be, in any locality or district) follows for any interval a geometrical ratio; that is such a rate of continuous progression as was explained in an article in the last number of this Journal on the Interest of money. And if this rate were constant for all intervals, we would thus have a prompt and easy method of fill

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