AND WHERE TO FIND ONE. 37 



any description. In actual practice, the real property is 

 rarely assessed for more than two-thirds of its cash value, 

 while large amounts of personal property, being easily con 

 cealed, escape assessment altogether. 



&quot; The assessed value of that portion of property which is 

 thus actually taxed increased as follows: In 1791 (esti 

 mated), $750,000,000 ; 1816 (estimated), $1,800,000,000; 

 1850 (official valuation), $7,135,780,228 ; 1860 (official val 

 uation), $16,159,616,068, showing an increase in the last 

 decade alone of $9,023,835,840. 



&quot; A question has been raised, in some quarters, as to the 

 correctness of these valuations of 1850 and 1860, in em 

 bracing in the valuation of 1850, $961,000,000, and in the 

 valuation of 1860, $1,936,000,000, as the assessed value of 

 slaves, insisting that black men are persons and not prop 

 erty, and should be regarded, like other men, only as pro 

 ducers and consumers. If this view of the subject should 

 be admitted, the valuation of 1850 would be reduced to 

 $6,174,780,000, and that of 1860, to $14,223,618,068, leav 

 ing the increase in the decade $8,848,825,840. 



&quot;The advance, even if reduced to $8,048,825,840, is suf 

 ficiently large to require the most attentive examination. 

 It is an increase of property over the valuation of 1850, of 

 130 per cent, while the increase of population in the same 

 decade was but 35.99 per cent. In seeking for the cause 

 of this discrepancy, we shall reach a fundamental and all- 

 important fact, which will furnish the key to the past and 

 to the future progress of the United States. It is the power 

 they possess, by means of canals and railways, to practi 

 cally abolish the distance between the seaboard and the 

 wide-spread and fertile regions of the interior, thereby re 

 moving the clog on their agricultural industry, and virtually 

 placing them side by side with the communities on the 

 Atlantic. During the decade ending in 1860, the sum of 



