OUR MARKETS, THE HOME AND THE FOREIGN. 9 



domestic exports, as compared with that in the period of partial 

 Free Trade, exhibits an increase of 94.9182 per cent., while a like 

 contrast between the two footings of import entries shows an aug- 

 mentation of 63.9364 per cent. The figures of exports of imports 

 also possess great significance. Although the excess in the last 

 fourteen years over the previous fourteen was $35,104,398, equal to 

 an advance of 11.7948 per cent., the ratio of exports of imports to 

 import entries in the low- tariff period was 6.9403 per cent., but in 

 the high-tariff period only 5.4148 per cent., making it very clear 

 that under Protection we retained for home consumption a much 

 larger proportion of our imports than we did under partial Free 

 Trade. 



An attempt is sometimes made to parry the force of this strong 

 statistical argument by saying that population ,in this country has 

 more than doubled since the passage of the tariff of 1846, and that, 

 vast as our exports and imports have been in recent years, they 

 have not kept pace with the growth of numbers, but are relatively 

 to the mass of individuals less now than they were a quarter of a 

 century ago. Apparently this objection is well founded, yet it will 

 not bear the test of contact with the realities of the case. Con- 

 clusively to settle the point, we have obtained, through a very tedi- 

 ous and laborious series of trial calculations, the exact per cent, of 

 annual increase of population for the decades ending severally in 

 1850, in 1860, and in 1870. These rates are so minutely accurate, 

 that, on multiplying the census enumeration by its connected per 

 centum, and then, after pointing off and discarding the decimal 

 fraction, adding the product to the multiplicand for a new multi- 

 plicand, and repeating the process for the remaining years of the 

 decennial period, the final result will be found identical with the 

 official count of the people for the current decennary. It being im- 

 possible to know what will be the number of inhabitants in 1880,' 

 we have assumed that the rate of increase since 1870 has been just 

 what it was during the decade 1850-60 an exceedingly liberal 

 allowance, considering what the superintendent of the ninth cen- 

 sus has to say about the probable increment. Having thus obtained 

 a trustworthy statement of the population in each year, we have 

 employed it in computing the per capita of domestic exports and of 

 import entries, annually, for the period embraced in our tables 

 above. Here are the results : 



