assessed value of property from 1790 to 1861, with the following results: the amount assessed in 1790 was $750,000,000, in 1816, $1,800,000,000, in 1850, 7,135,780,228, and in 1860, $16,159,616,068, being an increase during the last decade, of $9,023,835,840. The relative increase of property and population in the same decade was 130 per cent. for the former, and 35.99 per cent. for the latter, the difference being due to the vast canal and railroad facilities of the country. The amount expended for building railroads alone, from the food-exporting States to the seaboard, during the decade ending in 1860, was, $413,541,510, and their traffic receipts during 1860, 1861, and 1862 were $111,548,945, the saving in transportation alone to the communities they traversed being at least five times that amount. Assuming, after the deduction required by the decreased value in slaves, that the increased value of property in the United States for the decade ending in 1860 was $8,048 825,440, Mr. Ruggles shows that of this amount, the six manufacturing States of New England received $735,754,244, the middle Atlantic or carrying and commercial States, from New York to Maryland, received $1,834,911,579, and that the food-producing interior, embracing Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Missouri, received $2,810,000,000. Of this last-mentioned group of States it is shown that, while their improved lands have increased from 26,680,361 acres in 1850 to 51,826,395 in 1860, being 25,146,054 acres taken in ten years from the prairie and forest, or an amount equal to seven-eighths of the arable area of England, there still remain to be improved 230,308,293 acres, permitting a similar operation to be repeated eight times, and plainly demonstrating the capacity of this group of States to expand their present population of 8,957,690 to at least thirty or forty millions, without inconvenience. It is further shown that the cereal products of these States increased from 309,950,295 bushels in 1850 to 558,160,323 bushels in 1860, considerably exceeding the whole cereal product of England, and nearly, if not quite, equal to that of France. We can best measure this rapid and enormous accession of wealth by comparing it with an object which all nations value, the commercial marine. The commercial tonnage of the United States in 1840 was 2,180,764 tons; in 1850 was 3,535,494 tons; in 1860 was 5,358,808 tons. At $50 per ton, which is a full estimate, the whole pecuniary value of the 5,358,808 tons, embracing all our commercial fleets on the ocean, the lakes, and the rivers, and numbering nearly 30,000 vessels, would be but $267,940,000; whereas the increase in the pecuniary value of the States under consideration, in each year of the last decade, was $681,000,000. Five years' increase would purchase every commercial vessel in the Christian world.

THE DUNKARDS.-"The Dunkards of Pennsylvania, at their recent annual assembly, referred the subject of conscription to a committee, which reported in favor of sustaining the Government and obeying the laws, notwithstanding the non-resistant principles of the denomination. A resolution was recommended and adopted, that every member drafted shall pay his commutation, and, if he is not able, the expense shall be assessed on the members of the congregation."

This we regard as practical wisdom, and not at all inconsistent with their peace principles, unless it be inconsistent to support government by the payment of general taxes, or by recognizing its rights and powers in any way. All genuine peace-men, like Dunkards, Quakers, and Moravians, condemn the war principle on which all governments now act, and sustain them, under protest against this principle as wrong. Such protest is, or should only be well understood.

THE NORTH AND SOUTH IN CONTRAST. - In the South, war is the only pursuit; every man is in the army, or connected with it; every village and cross-road has its recruiting, or rather its drafting, station. Every woman esteems it her duty to work for the rebel cause. Business, science, amusements, education, all are merged in the one trade of war. Here at the North, on the contrary, our streets are alive with trade as if all the world were at peace. There is no lack of social intercourse or amusement. Our young men still plan excursions and drive their fast horses. The watering-places are full, and the tide of pleasure-seekers as incessant as in years gone by. Parties abound; and the gay and festive dance draws its crowd of light. hearted youth. We read of a victory, and go to our business or our recreations with a comfortable feeling that all is going well; or a defeat, and forget its import or results in the next five minutes. We see long lists of the killed and wounded in battle, say "poor fellows!" and go off to negotiate a sale, or make a call, as unconcerned as if the victims were Hindoos or Choctaws. In short, while our heroic boys are digging a dead march through the intrenchments of the Peninsula, or fighting step by step over ground that drinks human blood like rain, or yielding to the treacherous grasp of an insidious disease, or, grimy and black with powder, pouring destruction into the ranks of the country's foes, we are living at our ease, and thinking of the war only as a distant calamity.

NEAL DOW ON THE SOUTH.

Gen. Dow had in Southern prisons a long and bitter experience of the South; and from our knowledge of his character, we put the fullest confidence in his statements.

GENERAL CONDITION OF THE SOUTH. - Every branch of industry in the South is prostrate and ruined; the entire country is desolate. Every white male between the ages of eighteen and sixty is declared by law to be in the military service of the Confederacy; and no man in the entire country can be engaged as a clerk, artisan, or workman in any counting-room, factory, or other establishment, without a regular military detail from the authorities. Without that, no man can remain at home to attend to his own affairs. however important. The Southern country is a vast camp, full of soldiers, disciplined and undisciplined, every man a soldier, with none to feed, clothe, or pay them.

The contrast between what I see now, and what I have beheld the last nine months, is wider and greater than what I can tell you. In the South, everywhere I have travelled, I have beheld the desolation of war; everything I saw there reminded me that war is desolating our land; but as I come across the Potomac, and traverse the Free States, I see nothing that reminds me of war. You know nothing of war, except those of you who have offered up loved ones for the honor and safety of their country. Everywhere in the South the land is desolate because of the war. As the President of the Confederate States said, they undertook an enterprise, the magnitude of which they did not at all comprehend; an enterprise that had no other purpose than the establishment of a great empire founded on human slavery.

Until within a few months, the leading men of the South confidently believed in the success of their undertaking. Now they begin to realize the tremendous power of the North, in its naval resources, in men, money, and all the appliances of war, and everywhere they despair of success. The resources of the rebel country are exhausted. The rebel government is destitute of money, destitute of credit. It is impossible, as the rebels begin now to understand, to carry on this great war without money, without credit, without food, and with an absolute destitution of almost all the appliances of war.

TREATMENT OF PRISONERS. You have heard from high authority that the people of the South are semi-barbarians. Educated, so far as they are educated at all, in a disregard of the rights of 4,000,000 of their fellow-men; accustomed as they are to see the rights of others trampled in the dust, and undertaking to subsist on their unrecompensed labor, they learn to disregard the rights of everybody else in their intercourse with both blacks and whites. You see it in their intercourse with each other. The Union prisoners have come in contact with this feeling very largely. They have come in contact with such a people, and have experienced the most barbarous treatment. From the Confederate soldiers at the front, they have experienced kind and courteous treatment; but from the Home Guards" it has been more barbarous than any prisoners of war have suffered since the days of the Black Hole' of Calcutta. I know of nothing in the history of war to compare with the shameful treatment of the Union prisoners at Richmond, and Atlanta, Georgia.

of

A large quantity of clothing and blankets was sent to my care, to be distributed to the soldiers. I was permitted to visit them for the purpose distributing the articles. Passing around the camp at Belle Isle, I saw the wretched condition of our soldiers as to clothing and quarters. Nearly one-half of them were without shelter of any kind, and all were in extreme want of clothing. As I passed around the camp, they cried out to me to send them food. Shelterless and almost naked, as many of them were, their first want was food; their chief suffering was from hunger.

On my return to Richm, I addressed a note to Gen. Winder, in command there, stating that one-half the soldiers were without shelter, and all without sufficient food, and asking his immediate attention to their miserable condition. The result was, that I was not permitted to visit the soldiers any more; their condition was not alleviated, and these stores were put into the hands of another officer, who would conduct himself toward the rebel government with a great deal more forbearance than I was supposed to be capable of. Soldiers perished there at the rate of about five hundred per month, during the winter months, as we were informed.

Libby Prison was a great tobacco warehouse, or rather three tobacco warehouses, three stories high upon the front, four stories high upon the rear, separated by brick walls, through which doors were cut. Our officers were placed in these rooms with bare walls, bare floors, and without any blankets. When I arrived there, I was clad in the lightest summer clothes. It was a cold October night; and my sufferings must have been extreme, but for the kindness of my fellow-officers in supplying me with garments and blankets. After a while a great quantity of blankets was sent by the Sanitary Commission, which made us comparatively comfortable; but we were treated in other respects as so many negroes sent to Richmond to a barracoon for sale. An officer who had a very extensive acquaintance at the South said we were not nearly so well treated as that, for blacks sent for sale were kindly cared for that they might bring a better price. The Union officers were treated as so many cattle turned into a slaughter-pen or barn

to sleep, while Confederate officers in the hands of Union authorities are treated courteously and kindly.

A little incident occurred to myself, which will illustrate the point of difference of treatment between their prisoners and ours. I was exchanged for Gen. Lee. As I was called down to pass off, I had two large trunks to take away. I could obtain no assistance in transporting them, no dray, nor other mode of conveyance. Some of my fellow-officers kindly tendered their assistance, and we carried them between us through the streets of Richmond to the steamer, on which we were ordered upon the forward deck, and forbidden to come abaft the wheels. We were situated on the steamer like so many cattle, slaves, or swine, on the way to market. At City Point we met Gen. Lee in the magnificent saloon of the Federal steamer, New York, we emerging from the forward deck of the dirty rebel steamer. When Gen. Lee and his fellow-officers were ready to change steamers, the general stooped to pick up his small valise, when the Union officer in command said to a soldier near, "Sergeant, take the general's valise on board for him! I mention this to show the sort of treatment we received down South, and that which the rebels meet with when they fall into our hands. They are treated kindly, courteously; we, rudely, barbarously.

On the morning we came away, Maj. Turner assured Capts. Sawyer and Flynn, who were exchanged in connection with myself, that powder was there, and he said, 'Rather than have you rescued, I would have blown you to even if we had gone there ourselves." At first, we could not believe it; not that we did not suppose them capable of it; we did not suppose them fools enough to be guilty of an act like that. The destruction of nine hundred Union officers in that way would not have been a fatal blow to the Union cause, but it would have brought down upon them the execrations of mankind; it would have united the Northern people as one man, and would have fired the Northern heart with an intense indignation; and when Richmond should be captured, it would have been utterly destroyed, and blotted out forever from the earth. At first we could not believe that such an act could have been contemplated; but we now regard it as established by satisfactory proof. Such is the temper of the leaders of the rebellion! Such their character!

The rations furnished to the privates consisted entirely of corn-bread of miserable quality and insufficient quantity, which produces derangement of the digestive organs and death. The soldiers are slowly wasting away, and die of sheer starvation and cold. Two of them, sent off from Richmond at the same time with myself, died of exhaustion before reaching Annapolis. These poor creatures were reduced to such a state of extreme suffering that many of them were demented. They could not tell the name of their colonel, or the number of their regiment. One of them had become perfectly idiotic from long protracted suffering, many of them having slept all winter in the open air, with no shelter, and without overcoats or blankets. They were all supplied at the commencement of the winter with both, sent them by the U. S. Government; but they were compelled to sell them, in many instances, to procure the means of subsistence, their rations not being sufficient to support them in a state of health.

REBEL LOSS AT CHICKAMAUGA. Their own report makes it to have been killed, 2.299; dangerously wounded, 4,780; slightly, 10.500; missing 1,900. Total, 19,475; or one-half at least of the whole number of Bragg's army. All this, too, the result of what was at the time, and still is, claimed as a signal victory, over which the rebels and their sympathizers in Europe have sung peans of exultation.

--

WELLINGTON'S VIEW OF A VICTORY. After the battle of Waterloo, Wellington said: "Believe me, nothing excepting a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won. The bravery of my troops has hitherto saved me from the greater evil; but to win such a battle as this of Waterloo, at the expense of so many gallant friends, could only be termed a heavy misfortune, but for the result to the public."

And

WHAT DEEDS ARE COMMENDED in War. Gen. Sherman's expedition into Mississippi and Alabama was much extolled as signally successful. what was this success? The destruction of "150 miles of railroad, 67 bridges 7,000 feet of trestle, twenty locomotives, 28 cars, 10,000 bales of cotton, several steam-mills, and over 2,000,000 bushels of corn." Such is war, and such its commendable deeds! Now, if we allow the war-system, can we refuse to such achievements the meed of praise? But how strange that Christians should ever admire or tolerate them!

"IS THAT MOTHER?" Among the many brave, uncomplaining fellowwho were brought up from the battle-field of Fredericksburg, was a brighteyed, intelligent young man, or boy rather, of sixteen years, who belonged to a Northern regiment. He appeared more affectionate and tender than his comrades, and attracted a good deal of attention from the attendants and visitors. Manifestly the pet of some household, he longed for nothing so much as the arrival of his mother, who was expected, for she knew he was mortally wounded and failing fast. Ere she arrived, however, he died. But he thought she had come; for, while a kind lady visitor was wiping the death-sweat from his brow, as his sight was failing, he rallied a little, like an expiring taper in its socket, looked up longingly and joyfully, and in the tenderest pathos whispered, quite audibly, "Is that mother?" in tones that drew tears from every eye. Then, drawing her towards him with all his feeble power, he nestled his head in her arms like a sleeping infant, and thus died, with the sweet word "mother" on his quivering lips.

IMPORTANCE OF THE PRESENT CRISIS IN OUR COUNTRY. We are living in a wonderful period. Grand as were the revolutions that have occurred in the countries of the Old World, grand as was our own Revolution, still, grander events are now occurring. The part we have to play is as important in the history of the world and humanity as that played by our forefathers. Our capacity to maintain republican constitutional liberty is now on trial; if we succeed or fail, we involve the constitutional liberty of all mankind. White and black, we are all on the boat together. It is our duty to rise to a full comprehension of the era in which we live, so that regenerated as a people, we can stand in the vanguard of the nations of the world. · Senator Doolittle.

EMANCIPATION. - In Russia, as elsewhere, is a wonderful stimulant of the intellect. In one district, which formerly had ten village schools and 256 pupils, there are now 1,123 schools and 16,387 pupils: in another, the schools have increased from 20 to 277, and the pupils from 375 to 4,192; and in a third the schools have advanced from 308 to 1,238, and the pupils from 14,596 to 30,000.