The State of New York had been steadily advancing in population,
resources, and power, ever since the peace of 1785. At that time
it bore but a secondary rank among what were then considered the
great States of the Confederacy. Massachusetts, proper and
singly, then outnumbered us, while New England, collectively,
must have had some six or seven times our people. A very few
years of peace, however, brought material changes. In 1790, the
year in which the first census under the law of Congress was
taken, the State already contained 340,120 souls, while New
England had a few more than a million. It is worthy of remark
that, sixty years since, the entire State had but little more
than half of the population of the Manhattanese towns at the
present moment! Each succeeding census diminished these
proportions, until that of l830, when the return for the State of
New York gave 1,372,812, and for New England 1,954,709. At this
time, and for a considerable period preceding and succeeding it,
it was found that the proportion between the people of the State
of New York and the people of the city, was about as ten to one.
Between 1830 and 1840, the former had so far increased in numbers
as to possess as many people as ALL New England. In the next
decade, this proportion was exceeded; and the late returns show
that New York, singly, has passed ahead of all her enterprising
neighbors in that section of the Union. At the same time, the old
proportion between the State and the town--or, to be more
accurate, the TOWNS on the Bay of New York and its waters--has
been entirely lost, five to one being near the truth at the
present moment. It is easy to foresee that the time is not very
distant when two to one will be maintained with difficulty, as
between the State and its commercial capital.