in the United States in Fifty Years. 115 



31,479,000. When are they likely to attain this number ? Their 

 past progress, from 1790 to 1840, has been as follows : 



1790. 1800. 1810. 1820. 1830. 1840. 



Total population, 1,961,372 2,621,316 3,480,904 4,502,235 5,848,303 7,334,431 



Increase in each decen- 

 nial term, per cent, 33.7 32.8 29.3 30.2 25.4 



The whole increase in fifty years has been as 100 to 383.7. The 

 rate of increase, it will be perceived, has declined in the four decen- 

 nial terms between 1800 and 1840, from 33.7 per cent to 25.4 per 

 cent, showing a falling off in that time of 8.3 per cent in the ratio 

 of increase for ten years. But more than half of this decline took 

 place between 1830 and 1840, in consequence of the emigration to 

 Texas, which was principally from the slaveholding States. As 

 much of that emigration was the consequence of an ardent desire 

 to aid the Texians in their struggle for independence, as well as of 

 the great and sudden reverse of prosperity experienced by some of 

 those States, and as motives equally strong are not likely to recur, 

 we, perhaps, ought to regard this unwonted reduction of increase 

 as temporary, and to consider the previous rate as affording the 

 just rule for our estimates. Between 1800 and 1830, the falling off 

 in the decennial increase was only 3| per cent; but between 1800 

 and 1810, it was augmented 3 per cent by the acquisition of Loui- 

 siana. Let us, then, take a medium course, and suppose a rate of 

 diminution greater than that shown by the four first enumerations, 

 but smaller than that shown by the last. Let us suppose that, in 

 the future progress of the slaveholding States, the increase in each 

 decennial term will be one-fifteenth part less than the increase of 

 the preceding term, and see when, from that increase, the popula- 

 tion will attain a density of 50 to the square mile. 



The rate of increase thus diminishing, will be 23.3 per cent in 

 1850 ; 21.7 per cent in 1860 ; and so on, in a descending series, by 

 which, in a little upwards of eighty years, the population would 

 reach the required density, and amount to 31,000,000. But inas- 

 much as the other States increase in a much greater ratio, as 

 experience has shown, this circumstance is likely, after a time, to 

 accelerate the rate of increase in the slaveholding States. In fifty 

 years, when, on the supposed rate of increase, the latter would not 

 exceed 30 to the square mile, many, perhaps most of the free 

 States, will have attained a density of upwards of 100 on the same 

 area. The difference in the price of land which these different 

 densities imply, cannot but induce an increase of emigration from 



