the census testifies that an agricultural people, with African
slave labor, increases wealth faster than free labor, employed in
agriculture, manufactures and commerce, yet reason demands that it
should be satisfactorily accounted for. It is well known that laboring
freemen at the North are more skillful, work longer in a day, labor
harder while at it, live on cheaper food, and less of it, than laborers
at the South.

How, then, is it to be accounted for that the aggregate increase of
wealth is less with them than it is with Southern slaveholders? Among
many reasons that might be assigned, I will mention three. The first is,
that half the people at the North (this is ascertained to be about the
amount) live in villages, towns and cities. The second reason is, that
the cost of living in cities (as has been ascertained) is about double
what it is in the country--to this _cost_ we must _add_, for the
_imprudent_ indulgences of _pride_ and _fashion_; and to _this_ we must
_add_, for a thousand _indulgences_, in violation of _moral propriety_,
all of which are almost unknown in country life. The third reason is to
be found in the great amount of pauperism and crime produced by city
life. In the city of New York, for instance, according to the American
Almanac, there were received in 1847, at the principal alms-houses of
the city, twenty-eight thousand six hundred and ninety-two persons, and
_out-door relief_ was given _from the public funds_ to thirty-four
thousand five hundred and seventy-two more--making in all seventy-three
thousand two hundred and sixty-four persons, or one out of every five,
in the city of New York, dependent, more or less, on _public charity_.
The total cost of this, to the city, was three hundred and nineteen
thousand two hundred and ninety-three dollars and eighty-eight cents. In
1849, in the Mayor's message, the estimate for the same thing is four
hundred thousand dollars. In Massachusetts, according to the report of
the Secretary of State in 1848, the number of constant and occasional
paupers, in the _whole State_, was one to every twenty of the whole
population. The proportion in the cities, I suppose, would equal New
York, which, as we have seen, is one to five. To this _public burden_ in
cities, we must add an immense _unknown amount_ of _private charity_,
which is not needed in country life.

_Crime_ in Northern cities keeps pace with _pauperism_. In _Boston_,
according to official State repor