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throughout the north, which cannot fail to be experienced in 

 every department of rural economy. Instead, therefore of 

 seeking employment in distant regions, the sons and daughters of 

 New England will rejoice to dwell among the green hills of their 

 own native land, where repose the hallowed ashes of their ad- 

 venturous ancesters. If it should be urged that our population 

 is even now too dense for the successful enterprise of the rising 

 generation, it may be proper to inquire what number of inhabi- 

 tants are maintained, on the soil, in other and not more favored 

 portions of the globe. 



In England, where there is still so much land unsubdued by 

 cultivation there are over two hundred and seventy persons to the 

 square mile, which would give to Massachusetts more than two 

 millions of inhabitants, instead of the six hundred thousand 

 which it now contains. 



By a census of the Chinese empire taken in 1813, the popu- 

 lation, all of whom are subsisted upon the products of their own 

 soil, amounted to 370,000,000 ; but enormous as it seems, the 

 number to the square mile is not so great as in England. There 

 are, however, large provinces whose inhabitants are so numerous 

 that they average four, five and six hundred to the mile; and 

 there is one, whose area is nearly five times that of this state, 

 which has seven hundred to the square mile, which would give 

 us 5,460,000. But as still more conclusive evidence of how 

 many persons can be supported from the culture of the soil 

 alone, there is an island on the eastern coast of China, which 

 contains only one thousand square miles, being less than a sev- 

 enth part .of this State, which has a population of 400,000, or 

 400 to a square mile. There is not a town upon it, the inhabi- 

 tants living in hamlets and single houses scattered all over the 

 surface, and the only articles cultivated are rice, cotton, millet, 

 and culinary vegetables. 



The difference between the number of inhabitants to the 

 square mile, in the United States and that of China is still more 

 striking, as in the former there are only six while in the latter 

 there are 268. If, therefore, our whole country should be as 

 thickly populated the census would be 589,600,000, and if the 

 increase should continue in the ratio which it has done, during 

 the last forty years, it would require only 125 for this vast accu- 



