498
Opinion of Thomas, J.
American Colonies, in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 22 (1887) (hereinafter Dexter).
Many Americans resisted census-taking efforts. According to an 1887 inventory of the Colonies' attempts at population estimates, "Connecticut pursued in her colonial history the policy of hiding her strength in quietness; so far as might not be inconsistent with general truthfulness, she preferred to make no exhibit of her actual condition." Id., at 31.10 A
1712 census in New York "met with so much opposition, from superstitious fear of its breeding sickness, that only partial returns were obtained." Id., at 34 (citations omitted). See also Century 3. In New Jersey, the population counts of the mid-18th century apparently comprised "such guesses as the Royal Governors could make, for the satisfaction of their superiors." Dexter 36. In 1766, Benjamin Franklin "supposed that there might be about 160,000 whites in Pennsylvania . . . but he did not profess to speak with accuracy, and was under a bias which led him, perhaps unconsciously, into cautious understatement." Id., at 38. Georgia was apparently "singularly misrepresented, being overestimated in the Federal Convention of 1787 at nearly half as much again as her real amount of population, while the rest of the colonies were underestimated considerably,— the total of the Convention's figures falling short of the reality by more than half a million." Id., at 49.
The Framers also had experience with various statistical techniques. For example, Thomas Jefferson, who as Secretary of State would later be charged with running the first official national census, had a great interest in mathematics
10 See also Dept. of Commerce and Labor, A Century of Population Growth: From the First Census of the United States to the Twelfth, 1790- 1900, p. 4 (1909) (hereinafter Century) ("The people of Massachusetts and Connecticut manifested considerable opposition to census taking, seeing no advantage in it to themselves, and fearing that in some way the information obtained would be used by the British authorities to their disadvantage").
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