the increase of wealth. By tables 33 and 36 of
the census of 1860, it appears, omitting commerce, that the products of
industry, as given, viz., of agriculture, manufactures, mines, and
fisheries, were that year in New York $604,000,000, or $155 _per
capita_; and in Virginia $120,000,000, or $75 _per capita_. This shows a
total value of product in New York more than five times greater than in
Virginia, and _per capita_, more than 2 to 1. If we include the earnings
of commerce, and all business not given in the census, I think it will
be shown hereafter, that the value of the products and earnings of New
York, in 1860, exceeded those of Virginia at least 7 to 1. As to the
rate of increase, the value of the products of agriculture,
manufactures, mines, and fisheries of Virginia, in 1850, was $84,480,428
(table 9), and in New York $356,736,603, showing an increase in Virginia
from 1850 to 1860 of $35,519,572, being 41 per cent., and in New York
$247,263,397, being 69 per cent., exhibiting a difference of 28 per
cent. Now the increase of population in Virginia from 1850 to 1860 was
12.29 per cent., and in New York 25.29 per cent., the difference being
only 13 per cent. (Table 1, p. 131.) Thus, it appears, the increase of
wealth in New York, exclusive of the gains of commerce, as compared with
Virginia, was more than double the ratio of the augmentation of
population. By the census table of 1860, No. 35, p. 195, 'The true value
of the real and personal property, according to the eighth census was,
New York, $1,843,338,517, and of Virginia $793,249,681.' Now we have
seen the value of the products of New York in 1860 by the census was
$604,000,000, and in Virginia $120,000,000. Thus, as a question of the
annual yield of capital, that of New York was 32.82 per cent., and
Virginia 15.13 per cent.; the annual product of capital being more than
double in New York what it was in Virginia. The problem then is solved
in Virginia, as it was in Maryland and South Carolina, and all the South
compared with all the North, that slavery retards the progress of wealth
and accumulation of capital, in the ratio of 2 to 1. Our war taxes may
be very great, but the tax of slavery is far greater, and the relief
from it, in a few years, will add much more to the national wealth than
the whole deduction made by the war debt. Our total wealth, by the
census of 1860, being, by table 35, $16,159,616,068, one per cent. taken
annually to pay the interest a