NOTES ON THE POPULATION OE NEW ENGLAND. 249 



classes. A distinction is again made of the mentally diseased among 

 the native and the foreign population, which gives of native insane, 

 2,007, and of foreign insane, 625 ; of native idiotic, 1,043, and of for- 

 eign idiotic, 44. "We have here data of the most reliable kind ; but 

 there are different ways of dealing with them. Thus the Commis- 

 sioners, or rather Dr. Jarvis, in stating the comparative numbers 

 of native and foreign demented, carefully keeps up the distinction 

 hitherto followed, and by doing so shews that insanity is more com- 

 mon among the immigrants than among his own people. By this 

 mode of reckoning he shews the ratio of insane among natives to be 

 as 1 to 445, and the ratio of insane among foreigners to be as 1 to 

 368. The excess of lunacy among these strangers is unquestionable 

 and noticeable, but it is neither a strange fact, nor an unaccountable 

 one. Their trials explain all. The case is greatly altered, however, 

 when he deals with idiocy. This same comparison shews that among 

 the natives, the idiotic are as 1 to every 889, while among foreigners 

 they are as 1 to every 7,931. 



"Were we anxious merely to prove great derangement in both classes, 

 this mode of computation might suffice. But as we are anxious to 

 discover the actual amount of mental disease existing amongst a par- 

 ticular class, in common with the writer on lunacy in the North 

 American Review for January last, I cannot help deeming it unsatis- 

 factory, to say no more. I believe that the New Engianders 

 are degenerating, that every kind of mental disease is degeneracy, 

 whether for convenience sake the species be styled lunacy or idiocy; 

 and therefore must, and am entitled to conjoin both classes in order 

 to reach the actual state of the case. The saneness of a country can 

 only be decided on by knowing the total of the unsaneness found in 

 it. I believe, therefore, that though the Commissioners gave pecu- 

 liar prominence to the excess of foreign lunatics as compared with 

 native, every one, themselves not excepted, will admit tbat, in an en- 

 quiry like that which I now indicate, we are fully entitled to lay 

 aside their specific distinctions, and so speak of all the demented as 

 comprehended under one genus. 



"When we do so, the apparent exemption of the natives from 

 cerebral disease disappears at once, and most painful results be- 

 come manifest. In 1854 the natives in Massachusetts amounted to 

 894,076, the foreigners to 230,000. The insane and idiotic among the 

 former amounted in all to 3,050; the insane and idiotic among the latter 

 amounted in all to 669. The application is now easy, and the result, 

 that the mentally diseased among the foreigners are in the ratio of 1 

 to 367, while the mentally diseased among the natives are in the ratio 



