To supply slaves on plantations with bread, including old and young, requires from twelve to thirteen bushels of corn each a year.  Taking thirteen bushels as the average consumption of breadstuffs by the 22,000,000 of people in the United States, the aggregate is 286,000,000 bushels per annum.

The increase of production, from 1840 to 1850, was 214,000,000 bushels, equal to 56 per cent.

The production of New England advanced from 6,993,000 to 10,377,000 bushels, showing an increase of 3,384,000 bushels, nearly fifty per cent.  New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland, increased 20,812,000 bushels, more than fifty per cent.  In the production of this crop no State has retrograded.  Ohio, which in 1840 occupied the fourth place as a corn-producing State, now ranks as the first.  Kentucky is second, Illinois third, Tennessee fourth.  The crop of Illinois has increased from 2,000,000 to 5,500,000 bushels, or at the rate of 160 per cent. in ten years.

Of the numerous varieties some are best adapted to the Southern States, while others are better suited for the Northern and Eastern.  Those generally cultivated in the former are the Southern big and small yellow, the Southern big and small white flint, the yellow Peruvian, and the Virginian white gourd seed.  In the more Northerly and Easterly States they cultivate the golden sioux, or Northern yellow flint, the King Philip, or eight-rowed yellow, the Canadian early white, the Tuscarora, the white flour, and the Rhode Island white flint.

The extended cultivation of this grain is chiefly confined to the Eastern, Middle, and Western States, though much more successfully grown in the latter.  The amount exported from South Carolina, in 1748, was 39,308 bushels; from North Carolina, in 1753, 61,580 bushels; from Georgia, in 1755, 600 bushels; from Virginia, for several years preceding the revolution, annually 600,000 bushels; from Philadelphia, in 1765-66, 54,205 bushels; in 1771, 259,441 bushels.

The total amount exported from America in 1770, was 573,349 bushels; in 1791, 2,064,936 bushels, 351,695 of which were Indian meal; in 1800, 2,032,435 bushels, 338,108 of which were in meal; in 1810, 1,140,960 bushels, 86,744 of which were meal.  In 1820-21, there were exported 607,277 bushels of corn, and 131,669 barrels of Indian meal; in 1830-31, 571,312 bushels of corn, and 207,604 barrels of meal; in 1840-41,535,727 bushels of corn, and 232,284 barrels of meal; in 1845-46, 1,286,068 bushels of corn, and 298,790 barrels of meal; in 1846-47 16,326,050 bushels of corn, and 948,060 barrels of meal; in 1850-51, 3,426,811 bushels of corn, and 203,622 barrels of meal.  More than eleven millions of bushels of Indian corn were consumed in 1850, in the manufacture of spirituous liquors.

According to the census of 1840, the corn crop of the United States was 377,531,875 bushels; in 1850, 592,326,612 bushels.

The increase in the production of corn in Ohio has been (in ten years) 66 per cent.  I have also before me the auditor’s returns for the crop of 1850, as taken by assessors, and the number of acres planted.  The auditor’s returns are:—­