in the United Slates in Fifty Years. 121 



Increase of Atlantic States from 1830 to 1840, was as 100 to 173.4 

 That of the Western States " " 100 to 591.4 



Should their respective rates of increase in the current decennial 

 term be the same as it was in the last, the numbers in the Atlantic 

 States would, in 1850, be 12,428,000, and those in the Western 

 States, 11,170.000. It, therefore, will not be before the next 

 succeeding census, in 18G0, that those States will have preponde- 

 rance in numbers and political power, unless there should be, in 

 the present decennial term, a further disparity in their rate of 

 increase. 



On this subject it may be remarked, that most of the Western 

 States, which are as yet but thinly settled compared with their ex- 

 traordinary capabilities, have increased faster in the last ten years 

 than in the ten years preceding, and that the same causes may 

 continue to operate until the next census ; whereas, in the Atlantic 

 States, the cases of such increasing ratio are only two, and those 

 to a small extent. They are Massachusetts, whose decennial in- 

 crease has augmented from 16.6 per cent in 1830, to 20.9 in 1840, 

 — the great extension of her manufactures having checked her 

 wonted emigration — and New Jersy, whose increase has, in like 

 manner, augmented from 15.5 per cent to 16.4 per cent, in conse- 

 quence of her sympathetic growth with the cities of New York 

 and Philadelphia. In every other Atlantic state, the ratio of 

 decennial increase has diminished, so as to make the diminution in 

 the New England States from 17.8 to 14.3 percent ; in the Middle 

 States, from 29.2 to 23.3. per cent ; and in the Southern States, 

 from 21. to 8.2. per cent. 



But of the Western States, Mississippi augmented its ratio of 

 increase, in the same time, from 81. to 175. per cent; Louisiana, 

 from 40.6 to 61.6; Arkansas, from 112.8 to 221.1 ; Missouri, from 

 140.4 to 173.2; Illinois, from 185.1 to 202.4; Michigan, from 

 255.6 to 555.6 ; and even Ohio, the third State in the Union, from 

 61.3 to 62. per cent. And in most of these States, the next decennial 

 increase may possibly be yet greater than the last. In the Atlantic 

 States, on the other hand, the diminution may continue, though 

 probably at a less rate, since the emigration from the more northern 

 slaveholding States to the cotton-growing States may be much less 

 in the present term of ten years than it was in the last. On the 

 whole, should the decennial increase of the Atlantic States continue 

 11 



