TABLE IV.

Showing the number of slaves in each of the slaveholding states; the numerical increase in each ten years, and the increase per cent.; also the increase and the increase per cent. in forty years.

NOTE. The number of slaves in the states north of Maryland in 1790, was 48,267; in 1830, only 6,066; and of these, 5,546 belonged to New Jersey and Delaware.

TABLE V.

Showing the annual rate of increase per cent., during each of the ten years from 1790 to 1830.

Showing the times of the first and second duplication of the inhabitants. The second duplication, except with respect to the free coloured people, is by estimate,

In Table I. the aggregate number of inhabitants given to each square mile is just twice as great in the free states as in the slave states, including white, free coloured, and slaves.

Table II. is presented chiefly for the purpose of showing that the population of the free states has increased much more rapidly than that of the slave states. This will appear by the following estimates, founded upon the statistics of this table.

The Increase in the Free States up to 1830, was 4,877,060.

The difference is made still more obvious by contrasting the free and slave states severally-thus:

Thus it appears that the ratio of increase in the free states is much greater thau in the slave states. How is this to be explained? Certainly not by any advantages of soil, climate, or productions. In all these respects the south enjoys a marked superiority. Her soil is proverbially fertile, and her genial clime as favourable perhaps as any in the world, both for the rapid increase of population, and for the productions requisite for subsistence; while both soil and climate conspire to yield the most profitable staples known to commerce. Many of the free states, and those the most densely populated, are characterised by the reverse of all this. With a hilly surface and a stubborn soil, locked up by frost or covered with snow for one half of the year, they would seem able to yield but a stinted support to a scanty population, nor even that, without an amount of toil unfavourable to rapid increase. To what, then, is this striking superiority of the free over the slave states, in point of population, to be ascribed? To a political ascendency, by which the energies of the south are crippled, and her prosperity arrested? So far is this from being the case, as we shall have occasion hereafter to show, that although the free states elect a majority of the members of Congress, the slave states have, for all practical purposes, the entire ascendency. They have never yet failed to carry their favourite measures against the free states, and not unfrequently have succeeded in imposing upon the latter most disadvantageous restrictions in furtherance of their own sectional interests. The secret of the political power held by the slave states will be exposed in another place; suffice it here to observe, that the fact is notorious. No explanation can be given of the point in question but this-slavery has made the difference.

In Table III. the relative increase of all classes of the population is given, from which it appears that the increase of the slaves during forty years was nearly fifty per cent. less than that of the whites during the same period. This estimate embraces the whole white population, both north and south.

The slaves increase somewhat faster than the whites of the slave states alone. What proportion, however, of this is the natural increase by birth, and how much is owing to foreign importations, connot be accurately determined. Though the

ratio of increase is generally found to be greater among the labouring classes than among any other, the slave increase, compared with that of the whole white population, is greatly inferior; the natural effect of their excessive toil, scanty sustenance, and multiform privations and inflictions.

On the other hand, the reflex influence of slavery upon the slaveholders is seen in the reduction of the ratio of the increase of the white inhabitants in the slave states, even below that of the slaves.

SECOND QUESTION. From what states are slaves exported for sale, and what is the number from each state?

Slaves are exported from Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, and the district of Columbia. The states from which the largest proportion are taken are Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, and Kentucky, and of these Virginia exports most.

Of the number exported annually from each state we cannot speak with accuracy. From the following data, however, an estimate may be formed of the whole number, which will not be very far from the truth.

The "Virginia Times" (a weekly newspaper published at Wheeling, Virginia) estimates, in 1836, the number of slaves exported for sale from that state alone, during "the twelve months preceding," at forty thousand, the aggregate value of whom is computed at twenty-four millions of dollars.

Allowing for Virginia one half of the whole exportation during the period in question, and we have the appalling sum total of eighty thousand slaves exported in a single year from the breeding states. We cannot decide with certainty what proportion of the above number was furnished by each of the breeding states, but Maryland ranks next to Virginia in point of numbers, North Carolina follows Maryland, Kentucky, North Carolina, then Tennessee, Missouri, and Delaware.

THIRD QUESTION. To which of the states are slaves exported, and what is their number in each of those states?

The states into which slaves are imported are South Carolina,