Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Janet Blenkinship and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by Cornell University Digital Collections) THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY: DEVOTED TO LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY. VOL. V.--MAY, 1864.--No. V. AMERICAN FINANCES AND RESOURCES. LETTER NO. V. OF HON. ROBERT J. WALKER. LONDON, 10 Half Moon Street, Piccadilly, _February 8th, 1864_. In my third and fourth letters on American finances and resources, the following comparisons were instituted: Massachusetts and New Jersey, Free States, with Maryland and South Carolina, Slave States; New York and Pennsylvania, Free States, with Virginia, Slave State; Rhode Island, Free State, with Delaware, Slave State; Illinois, Free State, with Missouri, Slave State; the Free States of 1790, with the Slave States of that day; the Free States of 1860, with the Slave States of that date. These comparisons were based on the official returns of the Census of the United States, and exhibited in each case and in the aggregate the same invariable result, the vastly superior progress of the Free States in wealth, population, and education. I will now institute one other comparison, Kentucky, slaveholding, with Ohio, a Free State. Kentucky--population in 1790, 73,077; Ohio, none. 1800: Kentucky, 220,955; Ohio, 45,365. 1860: Kentucky, 1,155,684; Ohio, 2,339,502. We must institute the comparison from 1800, as Ohio was a wilderness in 1790, when Kentucky had a population of 73,077. In Kentucky, the ratio of increase of population from 1800 to 1860 was 527.98 per cent., and in the same period in Ohio 5,057.08. (Table 1, Census 1860.) Thus from 1800 to 1860 Ohio increased in nearly tenfold the ratio of Kentucky. WEALTH.--By Tables 33 and 36, Census of 1860, the value of the product of 1859 was as follows: Ohio, $337,619,000 Kentucky, 115,408,000 _Per Capita._ Ohio, $144 31 Kentucky, 99 92 Thus is it, that, while in 1790 and 1800 Kentucky was so very far in advance of Ohio, yet, in 1860, so vast was the advance of Ohio as compared with Kentucky, that the value of the product of Ohio was nearly triple that of Kentucky, and, _per capita_, much more than one third greater. No reason can be assigned for these remarkable results, except that Kentucky was slaveholding, and Ohio a Free State. Their area is nearly the same, and they are adjacent States; the soil of Kentucky is quite equal to that of Ohio, the climate better for crops and stock, and the products more various.