progress, is far from being a universally reliable one. We shall find
sometimes as wide a difference between two given millions as between
two given individuals. Either may grow without doing much else. They
may direct their energies to different fields. Compared with the
United States, France and Germany, for example, have advanced but
little in population. They have, however, done wonders for themselves
and the world by activities which we have, in comparison, neglected.
The old city of London gains in wealth as it loses in inhabitants.

[Illustration: HOE'S NEW PERFECTING PRINTING-PRESS, PRINTING 12,000
DOUBLE IMPRESSIONS PER HOUR, AND THE OLD EPHRATA PRESS.]

Yet success in the multiplication of souls within their own
borders--depopulate as they may elsewhere--is eagerly coveted and
regularly measured by all the nations. Since 1790, when we set them
the example, they have one by one adopted the rule of numbering heads
every five, six or ten years, recognizing latterly as well, more and
more, the importance of numbering other things, until men, women and
children have come to be embedded in a medley of steam-engines,
pigs, newspapers, schools, churches and bolts of calico. For twenty
centuries this taking of stock by governments had been an obsolete
practice, until revived by the framers of the American Constitution
and made a vital part of that instrument. The right of the most--and
not of the richest, the best, the bravest, the cleverest, or the
oldest in blood--to rule being formally recognized and set down on
paper, it became necessary to ascertain at stated intervals who were
the most. The lords of the soil, instead of being inducted into power
on the death of their parents with great pother of ointment, Te Deum,
heraldry, drum and trumpet, were chosen every ten years by a corps of
humble knights of the pencil and schedule.