Resources of the United States

12 proach, so that with nice and skillful hand, he may adapt the administration of his particular government to the due measure of its comparative capacities and powers. It is under the conviction, that this new-born, modem “ solidarity of nations” renders the statistics of each important to all, that the undersigned, in behalf of the United States of America, now ventures briefly to invite the attention of the International Statistical Congress, to some of the most prominent features exhibited by the compend of the census of 1860, now before this body, and especially to the evidence which it furnishes, of the rate and extent of material progress of the human race in that portion of the New World, committed by Providence to the care of the American Union. The exhibition will certainly furnish to some extent the means of statistical comparison with other portions of the world, and thereby enable the International Statistical Congress, in due time, to discharge what may become a very important and world-wide duty, in classifying the results from the reports of individual countries, and thus to present in scientific form the prominent and distinctive features of the comparative anatomy of nations. Nor is it to be feared that such a classification or comparison could ever be deemed useless or invidious. On this point the present body fortunately is able to refer to the highest authority. The impressive words, in the opening address of the late Prince Albert,—who deemed it no derogation from his eminent rank as the royal consort of the British Sovereign, to preside personally over your deliberations, and whose untimely death is mourned in both hemispheres as a loss to the human race,—now come to us with solemn earnestness. In the noble language of that truly exalted Prince, such comparisons will only “ prove to us afresh in figures, what we know “ already from feeling and experience—how dependent the il different nations are upon each other, for their progress—for

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