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Percy Wells Bidwell 



rate of 11.6 per cent. Taking the combined figures for Rhode Island and Con- 

 necticut, we find that before the Revolution the population of these states was 

 increasing at the rate of 28.4 per cent in each decade; after 1774 until 1790 the 

 increase was only 11.9 per cent per decennium. This slackening in growth seems 

 to have been due principally if not entirely to the increased emigration. The 

 statistics for Massachusetts agree in general with these figures. 



The continuance of emigration in the years 1790-1820 may be observed in 

 the slow rate of growth of southern New England as compared with the increase 

 of population throughout the United States. 



Table I.* 



The increase per cent in each decade was as follows: 



Table II. 



Statistical Estimate of Emigration, 1790-1820. 



So great had this colonizing movement become by 1810 that a number of at- 

 tempts had been made to estimate statistically its amount.' The method usually 

 adopted was the application to these states of the rate of increase observed over 

 the United States as a whole. Thus a figure was obtained which represented the 

 population which these states would have had, had there been no emigration. 

 The total increase in population throughout the country in the years 1790-1820 

 was 145.6 per cent. There seems no reason for believing that the natural increase 

 was any less in southern New England than elsewhere. Certainly with such an 

 outlet for surplus population as emigration ajfforded, and with such a readiness 

 to emigrate as the inhabitants of these states displayed, there could have been 

 but flight oi>eration of any preventive check. Nor does it appear that the death 



^ These figures are from the Abstract of the 13th U. S. Census, pp. 24-25. 

 As in all other computations in this essay, the figures for Massachusetts do not 

 include the pKjpulation of the District of Maine. 



* As in Burdick, William. The Massachusetts Manual. Boston. 1814. 1. 179; 

 and in Blodget, Economica, p. 79. 



