112 Progress of Population and Wealth 



Europe. As there, a large part even of the free labour can barely 

 earn a subsistence, and a portion cannot always do that, it follows 

 that slaves, whose labour is inherently less profitable, could not 

 earn enough for their snpport. We may, therefore, infer that a far 

 less dense population than now exists in the western part of Europe 

 would be inconsistent with slavery : and that the degree of density 

 which would render it productive of more profit than expense, would 

 be some intermediate point between that of Russia and that of the 

 other States of Europe. But the population of those States is 

 about 110 to the square mile, whilst that of Russia is but 25 ; and 

 though the degree of density when slavery first ceases to be profit- 

 able is somewhere between the two, yet, between such wide ex- 

 tremes, we have no means of ascertaining that intermediate point, 

 or of even approximating to it. Nor could any rule, drawn from 

 countries differing so widely in soil, climate, goodness of tillage, 

 and mode of living, be of easy application to the United States. 



But we may make a nearer approach to the truth if we confine 

 our speculations to the abolition of slavery in England, though that 

 part of her history is involved in no little darkness and contradic- 

 tion. In the fourteenth century, when the emancipation of villeins 

 had made considerable progress, the population in England and 

 Wales was computed, from the returns of a poll-tax, to be 2,350,000, 

 which is 40 persons to the square mile. About the end of the 

 seventeenth century (in 1690,) when no vestige of villeinage re- 

 mained, from the number of houses returned under the hearth-tax, 

 the population was estimated at 5,318,100, which is 92 to the square 

 mile. The medium point of density is 66, which we may assume 

 to be inconsistent with any profit from domestic slavery. 



But in applying this fact to the slaveholding States, there are 

 several points of diversity between them and England to be taken 

 into consideration. 1. The difference of fertility. Though three 

 of the slaveholding States, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, 

 constituting less than one-fourth of the whole, are naturally more 

 fertile than England, and are capable of supporting a denser popu- 

 lation than she was at the period supposed, the other three-fourths 

 are yet more inferior to England in fertility. 



2. The standard of comfort for the labouring class is much higher 

 here than it is in England, so far as it concerns the consumption of 

 animal food, in consequence of the peculiar circumstances of this 

 country, where the husbandry and useful arts of a cultivated people 

 are conjoined with the thin population of a rude one. In every 



