ts
and officers.

Mr. Trowbridge writes: "The money pressure is nearly or quite over in
New York, but we feel it here in a dreadful degree. The want of public
disbursements this year, upon which we have always rested our hopes with
so much confidence, added to the over-introduction of goods for a year
or two past, has produced this state of things, and I sometimes think
that there will be no great improvement in this generation."

_29th_. _Medical Causes of Depopulation_.--The causes of Indian
depopulation are wars, the want of abundance of food, intemperance, and
idleness. Dr. Pitcher, in a letter of this date, says: "In your note (to
'Sanillac') on the subject of the diminution in numbers of our
aboriginal neighbors, you have seized upon the most conspicuous, and,
during their continuance, the most fatal causes of their decline. With
the small-pox you might, however, associate the measles, which, in
consequence of their manner of treating the fever preceding the
eruption, viz., the use of vapor and cold baths combined, most commonly
tends to a mortal termination. To these two evils, propagated by the
diffusion of a specific virus, may be added the prevalence of general
epidemics, such as influenza, &c., whose virulence expends its force
without restraint upon the Indians. They are not (as you are aware) a
people who draw much instruction from the school of experience,
particularly in the department of medicine, and, when by the side of
this fact you place the protean forms which the diseases of epidemic
seasons assume, the inference must follow that multitudes of them perish
where the civilized man would escape (of which I could furnish
examples).

"It is the province of the science of medicine to preserve to society
its feeble and invalid members, which, notwithstanding the war it wages
upon the principle of political economists, augments considerably the
sum of human life. The victims of the diseases of civilization do not
balance the casualties, &c. of a ruder state of society, as may be seen
by inspecting the tables of the rates of mortality for a century past.

"I will suggest to you the propriety of improving this opportunity for
setting the public right on one point, and that is the effects of
aboriginal manners upon the physical character. For my part, I have long
since ceased to believe that they are indebted to their mode of life for
the vigor, as a race, which they exhibit, but that the naturally feeble