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The great problem of political economy is-How most economically to produce the best brain, and render it most profitable.

The growth and perfection of the brain is promoted by the proper action of all other parts of the body, which are directly or indirectly appendages of the brain, and the activities of all of them culminate in the activities of it.

The framework of the body is constructed with especial reference to the protection of the brain. The organs of sense connected by nerves with the brain are, as it were, its outposts or sentinels of vigilance.

The contractile muscles, connected by nerves with the brain, are its organs of locomotion that observations may be made, and also its purveyors to store up in good season those supplies which will allow us to quietly spend our mature years in reflection upon the facts gathered in youth and middle life, and thus render old age the ripe counselor of youthful activity; hence the prime of muscular life co-exists with the youth of brainial life, and the muscles decline just as the brain is reaching its best activity.

The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, the clothing we wear, the shelter we need, the fuel we use, rubbing, cleanliness, and whatever else comports with the health and welfare of the body, reach through the organs upon which they immediately act to the brain as the end of their action-as their goal. This generalization may be with propriety carried still further, for though most people may not lie, and surely are not conscious of the important truth, yet all they do, yes, every one of the multifarious operations of life, has brain-making for their logical or ultimate end.

But the relations of the brain to the body, and through it to the environment influencing it, are only part of the elements to be considered, if we would know how to perfect the brain and render it profitable.

Considered in view of those relations alone, the brain is not only an investment affording no profit, but causing a daily outgo; it is worse than a dead weight, it is a canker; it is selfish, devouring compounds of a very costly and valuable character, decomposing them and returning their elements in a more simple and deteriorated form, so that they must again pass through a very tedious and expensive process in order to be recompounded.

Brain, therefore, whatsoever its size and age, is not alone sufficient, as is evident in case of the idiot-a consistent expense unbalanced by any income. But though we may sometimes see the body without any manifestations of associated mind, the converse is never seen.

The brain is, therefore, a necessary material basis for mental operations, and as such it is not to be undervalued, nor should its expense be regretted, since it is fundamental, and the whole investment can be made to pay a large profit. How?

If a person during his life produce, or cause nature to produce, as much as he consumes, his account is balanced. If he so develop the resources of nature that she yields more than he consumes, the surplus is profit; but his ability to develop nature will depend upon his knowledge, and this again upon his education, viz.: that training of mind and body which give him a zeal for the acquisition and a facility in questioning nature. By many it is thought that education must be distinguished by a certain dignity, and clothed with a certain respectability, unsciled by the touch of any occupation requiring manual labor. But the education of which we speak is not

ashamed to put on its leather apron in the shop, or on the farm, or its checked apron in the kitchen, nor depressed if not called by any professional titlé, nor graduated at any particular school. Its motto always is "To be or not to be, that is the question."

Let us now reach the same truth in a different manner.

In case of the idiot we have the body alone distinct from mind. What has he cost? What is he worth? Principal and interest invested in his body, that is, his food, clothes, &c., with interest on their cost, will overreach $1,000 by the time he is twenty-one. The average cost, with interest, of raising any person to the age of twenty-one, will equal $1,000-this is invested-what is the investment worth? It will cost $100 per year to support him.

To this body add a mind, and in what an extraordinary ratio has the person's value been raised. He can now earn, suppose $300 per year, that equals $400 above the value of the idiot, which is to be set down to the credit of mind.

Now add education, perfecting him from birth to maturity, and what can he earn? Is $1,000 per year too much to allow? That is $700 more than the uneducated man is allowed; and how highly must we rate the expense of education? It could not overgo $700, which therefore yields 100 per cent. People usually count the cost of growth and sustenance of body as part of the expense of education, but this should never be done, a clear distinction should always be made between the expenses to be charged to the body and those to be charged to the mind, and as clear a distinction should be fade in case of the credits, for at once some very practical truths would be thus exhibited.

Perhaps the following table will present the truth in a conspicuous

manner:

Body, costs up to 21 years,..
Mind, costs up to 21 years.....
Education, costs up to 21 years,...

$1,000. After that,
000. Gains after that,
700. Gaius after that, 1,000 per year.

$100 per year. 300 per year.

It is also to be noticed that the uneducated man is more valuable in middle age than in advanced years; but the educated man grows more valuable as years increase, so that if he begin life with earning a sum which represents the interest of $10,000, he will find his income to double quite as soon as if his capital were in gold.

These figures are not fanciful, they are of course a certainty given for an uncertainty, and merely for illustration, they may be exchanged for any other to please any caviller, but any fair test of the truth will prove that education will pay more than 100 per cent upon its cost.

It would appear then that any man who would reckon up his investments must, to what he has in lands, cattle, implements, &c., add at least $1,000 for every mature child he has raised, and if he has added to the child a good education, he has changed this otherwise unprofitabe investment into a fortune of not less than $10,000. Now every principle of commercial policy, or of political economy, would dictate that we should add a little to any investment if we can thereby save the whole, and much more readily should we do it if we can turn the whole into the most profitable of all investments; and what investment is there which will pay, as will brain, mind, and education combined do?

Let us apply this idea to the State of New York:-It is rich in more than a million of children. Suppose the amount already invested in

them to equal $500 each, the sum total would be $500,000,000. To change this vast sum into a paying investment, it is only necessary to give each a good education; when suppose their increased value to be only $500 per year, their collective value would represent the interest on a capital of more than $7,000,000,000. Would not the taxable wealth of the State be increased by every farthing of such an amount, however astounding it may seem? Whence comes the taxable wealth of the State? Is it not from the developed resources of nature? Let every person be well educated, and the mind of man has not conceived, and cannot conceive, of the result. Educated minds sow each other with fruitful seed, and more than twice the number of ideas will be produced by two minds that can be by one alone. Let every one be well educated, and all must work, all will be willing to work, for drudgery will be reduced to its minimum, and one or two hours' labor per day will give everybody more comforts than any one now enjoys, and of course there will be plenty of time for mental cultivation and converse.

Thus it is seen that the expression "the wealth of a State consists in its citizens," is literally as well as figuratively correct.

More than three millions is the number of our population, invested in whom will be found more than three thousand millions of dollars; a greater sum than all the other "valuation" of the State, and if properly treated an admirable investment. This property is not merely personal, it belongs also to the public; and in the health and life of each person, every other citizen has an interest. A death ere old age is a public loss, to be sure like the drop in the ocean, yet it is one of the elements of public prosperity. If the person, however, cannot or will not return as much as he consumed, his death is a commercial profit to community.

We have thus reached three important conclusions, all of which, collectively, may, however, be counted as one, viz. :

The wealth and prosperity of a State consists, 1st, in the number of its healthy able-bodied citizens. 2d, in the association of mind with the body; and 3d, in the thorough education of each mind.

But the novel train of thought we have been following out, has brought to light and illustrated several truths, which indeed the logical mind would immediately infer.

If a farmer should raise stock and give it to his neighbors, his farm would grow poorer and their's richer. But the human brain is the most expensive stock that can be raised. A single brain is the concentrated essence of much land; it is very easily transported, and its possession is very desirable. The transfer of any able-bodied person from one section to another is a transfer of so much property as is invested in him. If uneducated, he is a thousand dollars drained from one and poured into the other. Emigration must, therefore, impoverish one as much as immigration enriches the other. If the persons moving are educated, so much the worse for the one and better for the other.

The West, therefore, must become rich, not so much from the richness of its soil and productiveness in cereal grains, as from the direct wealth in the commodious form of ready grown brains poured gratuitously into its lap. If a State receive 100,000 inhabitants by immigration, it is the same as receiving $100,000,000 in the best possible form. (In a new country muscles are worth more in proportion than in an old section.) So far as this emigration is from the East, it is a loser, and its only resource is to

draw wealth in some form elsewhere, the most commodious and advantageous form is immigration. It is with a country as with an individual, no one can rapidly become rich by the development of its own resources, but if it can by any means gather the riches of many countries it rises correspondingly in the scale of wealth.

Great Britain would, ere this, have been completely impoverished, if she had not by commerce tolled all the nations of the earth, and by enslaving whole tribes poured out their life-blood on her shores, and thus refertilized a soil constantly exhausted by the rich brains transferred to our inviting land. Thus has Jonathan insidiously drawn from his imperious father John, who cut him off without a cent, his full inheritance, and even in boyhood became very rich, compared with those who raise their own labor, while other nations, who have been pouring their treasures in the most lavish manner upon us, wonder at our unprecedented prosperity.

With this idea in mind compare the South and North, and our reason for the greater wealth of the latter will at once be seen, and of the Southern States it will be seen why those which raise the labor, even if they sell it, must be comparatively poor, while slaves can be imported at half the cost of raising them; the wealth of a country receiving them will correspondingly rise, but when that resource fails, some other means must be taken to gather wealth-gather is the key-note to wealth. Produce is an old fogy-honest, conservative, Christian, but a slow-coach.

The facts of immigration exhibited during the past year, are of great commercial importance to our whole country, while those of emigration are unprecedented in their importance to the financial interests of the State. The immigration into New York during the past year, is nearly 200,000 fewer than during the preceding year. If these persons should be valued at only $500 each, the total in which our country has suffered, is not less than $100,000,000. Immediate measures should be taken to correct an evil of such magnitude, extraordinary provisions should be made for the comfort of immigrants who land on our shores, and to reinduce the current of wealth which has been staid by the well-meant but evil-working operations of the past year or two.

There, also, should be established throughout our land evening schools, and every means to turn this great material basis of wealth into the richest investment possible.

All history will show, that the material and the mental prosperity of nations, their activity and position in respect to influence, has corresponded with immigration. The Assyrians, the Greeks, the Romans, the English, and still more ourselves, are examples of this truth which arises from two roots. 1st. Immigration is the most profitable mode of gathering wealth; and 2d. The mingling of blood, derived from various sources, enriches the products. Again, the burning of powder, the sinking of ships, the demolishing of forts, the ravaging of cities, the provisioning and clothing an army, are not the chief expenses of a war. No, but the amount of property in brains destroyed is also to be counted, and will be found the most important item. Every person killed in the Crimean war is to be counted as a thousand dollars destroyed. It is also to be considered that a man cannot be replaced in a moment-brain is a product or manufacture requiring years for its perfection, and the whole world will suffer from the loss experienced in any war.

In every view which we can take it will be seen that man is a composite

quantity, body and mind being the compounds; the body being the engine, the mind the engineer; the body a machine, the mind the superintendent; both are required for execution-the engine must be good, the engineer well informed, in order that the greatest profit may be rendered by both, or either.

Thus does a consideration of man in a commercial aspect, lead us through a train of thought none the less correct, because new and interesting, to conclusions none the less to be received, because they startle us by their magnitude and their immediate, practical, and personal applicability.

Art. III.-FRANCE AND THE SUEZ CANAL.

How surprising, the world of late so much engrossed with the testament of Peter the Great, yet does not bestow the slightest attention to its very counterpart, the memoir of St. Helena; although this latter is, to a great extent, the source to which every political combination of the present French emperor can be traced. Both these documents embrace the same object-universal empire: the one in the shape of a GræcoSlavonic Theocracy; and the other, the revival of the Franconic Empire in Western Europe, based on the new social principles of which Louis Napoleon has imbibed. The latter autograph is the more interesting of the two, because it is not simply a will, but rather an unsparing self-criticism of the vanquished hero and man of the people-showing how he would set to work if he had to begin anew the lost career. Napoleon I. repented himself, but too late, on the course of politics pursued by him against Great Britain; rather to war with her, he would now have sought her alliance-leaving to trade what open violence failed to effect. This plan Louis Napoleon is now studiously pursuing. Still, "ses amis les ennemis," seem yet unaware of the ultimate object of their cunning ally's commercial politics.

Napoleon I. neglected sorely the navy and the colonies; whereas it is a favorite plan with his successor to extend the colonial power, by any means, and to make the Mediterranean a French lake. His eyes also are fixed on Madagascar. No doubt, this fine island will turn out a valuable acquisition, if not for the French, at least for the world's trade, which has nothing to contribute to a conquest threatening to become as expensive as Algeria. It seems there is something in the national character of the French which will hinder them from ever becoming a colonial powerthey started so many settlements all over the world, and yet never got a benefit of any.

The extension of the new kingdom of Algeria to the Gulf of Cabes has been under consideration for some years, on account of the natural ports at the opening of the valleys of the Atlas, in the Pachalik of Tunis. The mountain chains of the Atlas all run parallel with the coast of Algeria, which has no natural or artificial port either thoroughly safe, not even "Mirza Keebir," the intended rival to Gibraltar. The possession of the natural ports of Mauritania would allow France to carry railroads to the heart of the yet disputed conquest, and would enable her to subdue the fanatical and stubborn Moslems of the Mahgreb (sunset) by a less costly

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