tions.

We may safely affirm, that, since the organization of the science of
statistics, no city in the world has ever multiplied its population,
wealth, and internal resources of livelihood with a rapidity approaching
that shown by New York. London has of late years made great progress
quantitively, but her means of accommodating a healthy and happy
population have kept no adequate pace with the increase of numbers.
During the year 1862, 75,000 immigrants landed at the port of New York;
in 1863, 150,000 more; and thus far in 1864 (we write in November)
200,000 have debarked here. Of these 425,000 immigrants, 40 per cent
have stayed in the city. Of the 170,000 thus staying, 90 per cent, or
153,000, are British subjects; and of these, it is not understating to
say that five eighths are dependent for their livelihood on physical
labor of the most elementary kind. By comparing these estimates with the
tax-list, it will appear that we have pushed our own inherent vitality
to an extent of forty millions increase in our taxable property, and
contributed to the support of the most gigantic war in human annals,
during the period that we received into our grand civic digestion a city
of British subjects as large as Bristol, and incorporated them into our
own body politic with more comfort both to mass and particles than
either had enjoyed at home.

There are still some people who regard the settlement of countries and
the selection of great capitals as a matter of pure romantic accident.
Philosophers know, that, if, at the opening of the Adamic period, any
man had existed with a perfect knowledge of the world's physical
geography and the laws of national development, he would have been able
to foretell _a priori_ the situations of all the greatest capitals. It
is a law as fixed as that defining the course of matter in the line of
least resistance, that population flows to the level where the best
livelihood is most easily obtained. The brute motives of food and
raiment must govern in their selection of residence nine tenths of the
human race. A few noble enthusiasts, like those of Plymouth Colony, may
leave immortal footprints on a rugged coast, exchanging old civilization
for a new battle with savagery, and abandoning comfort with conformity
for a good conscience with privation. Still, had there been back of
Plymouth none of the timber, the quarries, the running streams, the
natural avenues of inland communication, and to some