in the United States in Fifty Years. 127 



CHAPTER XVI. 



CITIES AND TOWNS. 



The proportion between the rural and town population of a 

 country is an important fact in its interior economy and condition. 

 It determines, in a great degree, its capacity for manufactures, the 

 extent of its commerce, and the amount of its wealth. The growth 

 of cities commonly marks the progress of intelligence and the arts, 

 measures the sum of social enjoyment, and always implies increased 

 mental activity, which is sometimes healthy and useful, sometimes 

 distempered and pernicious. If these congregations of men diminish 

 some of the comforts of life, they augment others : if they are less 

 favourable to health than the country, they also provide better 

 defences against disease, and better means of cure. From causes 

 both physical and moral, they are less favourable to the multiplica- 

 tion of the species. In the eyes of the moralist, cities afford a wider 

 field both for virtue and vice ; and they are more prone to innovation, 

 whether for good or evil. The love of civil liberty is, perhaps, 

 both stronger and more constant in the country than the town ; 

 and if it is guarded in the cities by a keener vigilance and a more 

 farsighted jealousy, yet law, order, and security, are also, in them, 

 more exposed to danger, from the greater facility with which 

 intrigue and ambition can there operate on ignorance and want. 

 Whatever may be the good or evil tendencies of populous cities, 

 they are the result to which all countries, that are at once fertile, 

 free, and intelligent, inevitably tend. 



The following table shows the population of the towns in the 

 United States, of 10,000 inhabitants and upwards, in 1820, 1830, 

 and 1840 ; their decennial increase, and the present ratio of the 

 town population, in each State, to its whole population : 



