This population is now, no doubt, incrcafed, but, as no returns have fince been made, it is impoffible to ftate the increase with any accuracy; but we cannot deviate far from truth in stating the prefent number of male inhabitants above fixteen years of age, at about twenty-three thoufand, thofe under at nearly the fame, and the total number of females at forty-two thousand: this calculation poffeffes, at leaft, the merit of not over-rating the numbers, and is warranted by the account which Mr. Belknap has given of the population of a neighbour State. As a proof

that the population of this State has rapidly increased, we may obferve, that the town of Danville, which, according to the preceding account, contained in 1790, five hundred and seventyfour inhabitants, was five years before a wilderness without a fingle family.

Mr. Williams in his Hiftory of Vermont obferves, that the deaths in that State are, to the births, in the proportion of 1 to 4, 85, of confequence the period of doubling in this ftate, at prefent, is nineteen years and five months.*

From fuch views of the increase and population in America, we can scarcely avoid comparing the ftate of things in the United States, with that of the ancient and populous countries in Europe. In the city of London, if we may judge from the annual bills of mortality, the human race are annually decreaf ing; the deaths generally exceed the births, about one tenth every year. The favage ftate was lefs unfavourable to the increase of mankind, than fuch large and populcus cities: Inftead of preferving, they tend to deftroy the human race.

In most of the ancient and populous nations of Europe, their forms of government, their ecclefiaftical establishments, the extreme luxury of one part of the people, and the extreme poverty of the other, their long and bloody wars, their numerous fleets and armies, the numbers which are reduced to fervitude, and rendered incapable of fupporting families, with the impious inftitutions of celibacy, have nearly destroyed the natural increase of mankind; or at least they have rendered it extremely flow, and uncertain. "In Great-Britain, and most other European countries, they are not fuppofed to double in lefs than five hundred years."+ In vain do politicians go about to celebrate the wisdom of a flate of fociety, which destroys the nobleft fruit and production of nature: It must be effentially, and fundamentally bad. The fureft proof of the profperity of any country, is a rapid increafe of the people.

RELIGION, CHARACTER, &c.

The principal body of the people are Congregationalists and Baptifts; the other denominations are Prefbyterians and Epifcopalians; their character and manners, as might be expected,

* Since writing the above fays Mr. Williams. I have received from Dr. Afaph Fletcher, an accurate obferver and able phyfician, an account of the births and deaths in the town of Cavendiħ. In the courfe of feven years the number of births in that town was two hundred and ten; the number that died in the fame period, was thirty. The ratio of deaths to that of births in that town, during this period, has been but as one to leven.

+ Smith's wealth of nations, Vel I of