20 ana, Illinois, Michigan, "Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri, received $2,810,000,000. This very large accession of wealth to this single group of States is sufficiently important to be stated more in detail. The group, taken as a whole, extends from the western boundaries of New York and Pennsylvania to the Missouri river, through fourteen degrees of longitude, and from the Ohio river north to the British dominions, through twelve degrees of latitude. It embraces an area of 441,167 square miles, or 282,134,688 acres, nearly all of which is arable and exceedingly fertile, much of it in prairie and ready at once for the plough. There may be a small portion adjacent to Lake Superior unfit for cultivation, but it is abundantly compensated by its rich deposits of copper and of iron of the best quality. Into this immense natural garden in a salubrious and desirable portion of the temperate zone, the swelling stream of population, from the older Atlantic States and from Europe, has steadily flowed during the last decade, increasing its previous population from 5,403,595 to 8,957,690, an accession of 3,554,095 inhabitants gained by the peaceful conquest of Nature, fully equal to the population of Silesia which cost Frederick the Great the Seven Years War, and exceeding that of Scotland, the subject of struggle for centuries. The rapid influx of population into this group of States increased the quantity of the “ improved” land, thereby meaning farms more or less cultivated, within their limits, from 26,680,361 acres in 1850 to 51,826,395 acres in 1860, but leaving a residue yet to be improved of 230,308,293 acres. The area of 25,146,054 acres thus taken in ten years from the prairie and the forest, is equal to seven-eighths of the arable area of England, stated by its political economists to be 28,000,000 of acres. The area embraced in the residue will permit a similar operation to be repeated eight times successively, plainly demonstrating the capacity of this group of States to expand their present
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