74} Mr Harvey on the Increase of the Population 
paper just quoted, viz. “ that our State (Pennsylvania), is the 
great outport of the United States for Europeans ; and that, af- 
ter performing the office of a sieve, by detaining all those people 
who possess the stamina of industry and virtue , it allows a pas- 
sage to the rest to those States which are accommodated to their 
habits of indolence and vice? The States particularly mention- 
ed by Dr Rush, are Virginia, North and South Carolina, and 
Georgia. Whether, however, the character which he attributed 
to them in 1786, be not too strongly marked for the present 
period, and whether the white inhabitants of those States may 
not have improved in their moral habits, in common with the 
age, is a question worthy of the most deliberate consideration. 
Still, in the most favourable point of view in which the subject 
can be contemplated, there is much reason to fear that the solid 
attributes of virtue cannot be very powerfully developed in a 
being, who is surrounded on all sides by slaves, and who can 
draw no other impression from their low and unhappy condition, 
but such as have a tendency to debase the mind. No associations 
can arise from the contemplation of a social system of this kind, 
if social it may be called, all calculated to exalt the human 
character, to develope the pure feelings of humanity, and unfold 
all the better attributes of our nature. The time, however, may 
come, when the American Government will feel disposed to give 
a practical proof of its love of liberty, by extending the blessings 
of freedom to her slave population. And, in the mean time, 
much may be done in all the States, but particularly in the 
southern and territorial governments, to check, by every humane 
and laudable means, their farther increase ; to soften and improve 
the condition of these who remain ; and, by freeing their minds 
gradually from the degrading fetters of ignorance, as well as 
their bodies from the dominion of the chain and the whip, to 
prepare them for all the blessings of a final emancipation, and 
to which, as moral and intelligent beings, they are equally enti- 
tled with themselves . 
It may not, however, be uninteresting, to pursue this branch of 
the subject a little farther, and to trace, in a more particular 
manner, the numerical relations existing between the slaves and 
the free population, in all the States. For this purpose, the fol- 
lowing table has been calculated, and which, by assuming unity 
as the representative number for the slaves in each State, ex- 
