96 Progress of Population and Wealth 



aged only, who are left behind. Even the slave-dealers, although 

 they confine their odious traffic chiefly to adults, confine it also to 

 those who are young and healthy, and whose increase, consequently, 

 or the loss of it, in a few years corrects, and more than corrects, 

 the slight temporary change in the proportion between children 

 and females, which their removal occasioned both in the State they 

 had left and in the State they were carried to. We accordingly 

 find, that Virginia exhibits no excess of slave children, in conse- 

 quence of the 180,000 slaves which the census shows she had lost 

 between 1830 and 1840. On the contrary, the number had under- 

 gone a sensible decrease (from 35.0 to 33.9) in that time; and 

 North Carolina, which had parted with a smaller proportion of 

 slaves in the same time, (about 80,000,) exhibits also, a correspondent 

 decrease in the proportion of children, that is, from 37. to 36.2 

 per cent. These facts seem to show that the transportation of 

 slaves from State to State, by settlers and slavedealers, tends 

 rather to raise than to lower the proportion of children in the 

 importing State. 



Though we have no data for estimating the other causes of 

 diminution with even an approach to accuracy, we must admit 

 that their combined force does not seem insufficient to account for 

 the large deficiency (128,000) shown by the census of 1840; and 

 no one -well acquainted with the condition of slavery in the United 

 States, will admit, without the most indubitable evidence, a falling 

 off in the natural increase of the slaves, farther than to the qualified 

 extent that has been mentioned. This natural increase probobly 

 exceeded 32 per cent in ten years, during the three first terms, 

 and was certainly below 33 per cent. The subsequent diminution, 

 in consequence of the great movement of the slave population 

 to the south, when cotton bore a high price and money was 

 redundant, has scarcely been more than from 1 to 2 per cent 

 of the whole slave population, so as to make the average 

 decennial increase in fifty years not widely different from the 32.2 

 per cent supposed, 



The natural increase of the free coloured population is the more 

 difficult to estimate on account of emancipation, which we have no 

 means of ascertaining, and which, while it but slightly diminishes 

 the rate of increase of slaves, greatly augments that of the free 

 coloured class. Thus, the decennial increase of this class has 

 varied from 82.3 to 20.9 per cent, though that of the slaves has 

 ranged only from 33.4 to 23.8 per cent. The census, nevertheless, 



