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But, while the British census makes no attempt at estimating the property of the people, the independent estimates of statistical writers vary hopelessly and irreconcilably. Mr. J. R. McCulloch, one of the foremost accredited writers on economic science, lays it down as a dictum, that sixty years is the shortest time in which the capital of an old and densely-peopled country can be expected to be doubled. Yet Joseph Lowe assumes the wealth of the United Kingdom to have doubled in eighteen years, from 1823 to 1841; while George R. Porter, in his widely-accredited book on the Progress of the Nation, and Leoni Levi, a publicist of high reputation, make out, (by combining their estimates) that the private wealth of England increased fifty per cent. in seventeen years, at which rate it would double in about twenty-nine years, instead of sixty, as laid down by Mr. McCulloch. Mr. Levi calculates the aggregate private wealth of Great Britain in 1858, at $29,178,000,000, being a fraction less than the guesses of the census enumerators at the national wealth of the United States, twelve years later, in 1870. Can one guess be said to be any nearer the fact than the other? May we not be pardoned for treating all estimates as utterly fallacious that are not based upon known facts and figures? Why do we hear so much of the approximate correctness of so many statistical tables, when, in point of fact, the primary data are incapable of proof, and the averages and conclusions built upon them are all assumed? Statisticians, says one of the fraternity, are generally held to be eminently practical people; on the contrary, they are more given to theorizing than any other class of writers; and are generally less expert in it. In the presence of such gross discrepancies as these, by statisticians of the highest repute, and among such a practical people as the English, what value can be attached to the mere estimates of wealth which have been attempted in the census of the United States? The careful Superintendent of the Census of 1870 and 1880, the late Francis A. Walker, writes concerning it: At the best, these figures represent but the opinion of one man, or of a body of men, in the collection of material, and in the calculation of the several elements of the public wealth. And in the last Census Report for 1890, the results of the so-called census of wealth, are cautiously submitted, as showing in a general way a continuous increase in the wealth of the nation, the exact proportions of which cannot be measured. Now, what are we to conclude regarding the attempt to elevate to a rank in statistical science, mere estimates of private wealth, for a large portion of which, by the statements of those who make them, no actual statistical data exist? And when this is confessedly the case in our own country, the only one attempting the impossible task of tabulating the wealth of the people, what shall we say of the demand that is made upon our credulity of accepting the guesses of Mr. Giffen, or Mr. Mulhall, as to British wealth? Are we not justified in applying the old Latin maxim-De non apparentibus, et de non existentibus, eadem est ratio,' and replying to those who demand of us to know how much any nation is worth, that it is sometimes an important part of knowledge to know that nothing can be known? Among the literally innumerable inquiries liable to be made of a librarian, here is one which may give him more than a moment's pause, unless he is uncommonly well versed in American political history-namely, What was the Ostend Manifesto? To a mind not previously instructed these two words Ostend Manifesto, convey absolutely no meaning. You turn to the standard encyclopedias, Appleton's, Johnson's Universal, and the Britannica, and you find an account of Ostend, a little Belgian city, its locality, commerce, and population, but absolutely nothing about an Ostend manifesto. But in J. N. Larned's History for Ready Reference, a useful book in five volumes, arranged in alphabetical order, you get a clue. It refers you from Ostend, under letter 0, to Cuba, where you learn that this formidable Ostend manifesto was nothing more nor less than a paper drawn up and signed by Messrs. Buchanan, Mason, and Slidell, Ministers of the United States to Great Britain, France, and Spain, respectively, when at the watering-place of Ostend, in 1854, importing that the island of Cuba ought to, and under certain circumstances, must belong to the United States. Looking a little farther, as the manifesto is not published in Larned, you find the text of the document itself in Cluskey's Political Text-Book, of 1860, and in some of the American newspapers of 1854. This is a case of pursuing a once notorious, but more recently obscure topic, through many works of reference until found.

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