with discretion.

This country has undergone many important changes since the
commencement of the present century. Some of these changes have been
for the better; others, we think out of all question, for the
worse. The last is a fact that can be known to the generation which is
coming into life, by report only, and these pages may possibly throw
some little light on both points, in representing things as they
were. The population of the republic is probably something more than
eighteen millions and a half to-day; in the year of our Lord one
thousand eight hundred, it was but a little more than five
millions. In 1800, the population of New-York was somewhat less than
six hundred thousand souls; to-day it is probably a little less than
two millions seven hundred thousand souls. In 1800, the town of
New-York had sixty thousand inhabitants, whereas, including Brooklyn
and Williamsburg, which then virtually had no existence, it must have
at this moment quite four hundred thousand. These are prodigious
numerical changes, that have produced changes of another
sort. Although an increase of numbers does not necessarily infer an
increase of high civilization, it reasonably leads to the expectation
of great melioration in the commoner comforts. Such has been the
result, and to those familiar with facts as they now exist, the
difference will probably be apparent in these pages.

Although the moral changes in American society have not kept even pace
with those that are purely physical, many that are essential have
nevertheless occurred. Of all the British possessions on this
continent, New-York, after its conquest from the Dutch, received most
of the social organization of the mother country. Under the Dutch,
even, it had some of these characteristic peculiarities, in its