from the overpeopled nations of Europe will carry the knowledge and arts of civilized society into the remotest countries, and spread them over the whole habitable world. The increase in the inhabitants of the United States is the more gratifying, as it affords decisive evidence of their superiority in point of comfort over those of all other countries. It indicates that want, the scourge of mankind, and the fruitful source of misery and crime every where else, scarcely exists among us. This is a proud distinction. The rate of increase appears not to have varied much, as the first permanent settlement was made in 1611, and an original stock of 10,000 persons, supposing this number to have come over in the first twenty years, with a very moderate allowance for importations afterwards, would, at the present rate of increase, produce the existing number. The progress would become rapid after the colonies had acquired sufficient strength to feel themselves secure from Indian hostility, and would not experience a retardation in any district, till the difficulty of obtaining good land overbalanced the advantages resulting from condensed numbers. The population at present doubles once in twenty-three years, so that in ninety-two years it doubles four times, or increases sixteen fold, and in a century about twentyfold. This supposes an annual augmentation of three per cent. or one thirty-third part. The rate of increase for the ten years ending 1800, and the ten years ending 1810, as ascertained by the census, is almost precisely the same, and agrees very nearly with the ratio of three per cent. being 1.35 in the former, and

1.36 in the latter, including the population of Louisiana, or 1.347 excluding it, while the true increase at three per cent. is 1.344. Taking the present population at ten millions, the annual increment or excess of births over deaths must be 330,000, and this shows how inconsiderable the effect of any supposable number of European emigrants must be upon the amount of the population of North America. The nearest approximation to this rate of multiplication in Europe is probably to be found in Ireland, where the popula tion is believed to have doubled within the 28 years ending in 1805; but this statement does not rest upon an actual enumeration, and the effect has been the reverse of beneficial. In England, the population, according to the best accounts, has exactly doubled in the hundred years, ending in 1811, while that of Scotland had only increased one-half in the same period. According to Euler's table, the rate of increase in England implies an annual augmentation of, or something less than the two-thirds per cent. The yearly addition to the population, or the excess of births over deaths, would, in this case, be 75,000, but must be actually much greater to supply the drain occasioned by the colonies. Population has, therefore, increased ten times as fast in the United States, as in England during the last century; and yet the population of England has probably advanced faster than that of any of the continental states of Europe except Russia. Canada and Mexico, however, from the similarity of their situations, present better data for comparison. The population of the former, according to the

official returns of 1764, and 1783, the only enumerations to be depended on, was 76,275, aud 113,012, showing an annual increase during these nineteen years of about two per cent. which makes the period of doubling about 36 years. Canada was colonized about the same time with the United States; and if it be less favoured in climate and soil, on the one hand, it should be taken into account, on the other, that the influx of British emigrants must have had a more sensible effect in raising the numbers where the original stock was so small. M. Lambert, who was in the country in 1808, estimates the number of inhabitants at 200,000. Mexico, which was colonized ninety years before the United States, and under more favourable circumstances, had, according to the official returns in 1793, only about 4,500,000 inhabitants, of which nearly one-half were Indians. The supposition of Humboldt, grounded on estimates of births and deaths, that the rate of increase, if not checked by extraordinary casualties, would make the population double in nineteen years, is totally inconsistent with the anterior progress of the colony. An original stock of 10,000 persons, without allowing any thing for subsequent supplies from Spain, or for intermarriages with Indians, would by doubling every thirtyfive years, produce the present Creole and mixed breed population.

In the period between 1790 and 1810 the free citizens of the United States increased rather faster than the slaves, but this arose from the abolition or discontinuance of slavery in several states. For, in the slave

states generally, the proportion of slaves increased. In the two Carolinas, in 1790, the slaves were to the freemen as 10 to 21; in 1810, as 10 to 17. In Virginia, and the other southern states, the change was of the same kind; but, in Maryland, the proportion of slaves diminished; and in Delaware, New Jersey, and all the states farther north, not only the proportion, but the actual number diminished. The number of free persons in 1810, in all the states, including Louisiana, was to the number in 1790 as 187 to 100; the slave population as 170 to 100; the whole population as 184 to 100. The slaves increased more rapidly during the last period of ten years than during the first, in the proportion of 133 to 128. The slave trade being abolished only in 1808, it is impossible to say how much of this increase is to be ascribed to importations, but the census of 1820 will throw light on this important point.

Slavery is the grand evil in the United States, and, unfortunately, it is one for which it is difficult to devise a remedy. Hitherto it has grown with the growth of the nation; but its abolition, in several of the states where it once existed, shows that its total extirpation may yet be accomplished. The period of its natural termination will be, when the employment of negro slaves becomes less profitable than that of free labourers. And this will take place when wages are reduced by the increase of the white population, and when improvements in husbandry have rendered intelligence and skill of greater value in workmen. This period, however, may yet be distant, and when

it arrives, the difficulty felt at present, as to how the discharged slaves are to be disposed of, will then apply with increased force. It is to be hoped, that, among an enlightened people, a sense of the moral and political evils it produces, will lead to its gradual abolition before a remedy becomes very difficult.

The increase of the free population in some of the older states was very small between 1790 and 1810. If we express the population at the former period by 10, it will scarcely exceed 11 at the latter in Rhode Island and Connecticut; in Massachusetts and Maryland, the increase was from 10 to 12 nearly; in Delaware, and North Carolina, and New Jersey, from 10 to 13; in New Hampshire and South Carolina, from 10 to 15; in Pennsylvania, from 10 to 18; in Maine, from 10 to 24; in Vermont, from 10 to 25; in Georgia, from 10 to 28; in New York, from 10 to 30; in Kentucky, from 10 to 53; and in the country beyond the Ohio, from 10 to 83. The mean of the whole must be 10 to 18; or, more accurately, 100 to 187. States where the proportion falls below the mean may be considered as sending out supplies to those where it rises above it.

Where the principle of increase is so active, the proportion of young persons is necessarily much greater, and of aged persons much smaller, than in countries where the population is stationary. This becomes evident when we reflect, that, since the inhabitants of the United States quadruple their numbers in fortysix years, a person who is now above this age is the representative of a society four times smaller than that