The life and public services of Abraham Lincoln ... together with his state papers, including his speeches, addresses, messages, letters, and proclamations, and the closing scenes connected with his life and death. By Henry J. Raymond. To which are added anecdotes and personal reminiscences of President Lincoln, by Frank B. Carpenter.

STATE PAPERS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

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some other parts of our country in natural capacity for sustaining a dense
population.
Taking tile nation in the aggregate, and we find its population and rat;i
of increase, for the several decennial periods, to be as follow8:1799............... 3,929,827
1800................ 5,305,937 35.02 per cent. ratio of increase.
1810.............. 7,239,814 36.45 " "
1.2................ 9,638,131 33.13 " 4
18:30............... 12,866,020 33.49 " "
1840................ 17,069453 32.67
1850................ 23,191,876 35.87 " "
1860............... 31,443,790 35. 58'
This shows an average decennial increase of 34.60 per cent. in polulation through the seventy years, trolm our first to urll last cvnsus. yet taker
It is seen that the ratio of increase, at no, one of tlhese two periods, is
either two per cent. below or two per cent. ablve tle averlae; thus showing how inflexible, and consequently how reliable, the law of increase in
our case is. Assuming that it will continue, it gives the following results:
1870................................... 42,323.341
1880.................................. 56,;7,216
1890.................................... 76, G77, 72
1900...................................... 103,208,415
1910................................... 18, 1,526
1920....................................f 6,94s4,:335
1930................................... 251,G680,914
These figures show that our country may be as populous as Europe now
is at some point b)etween 1920 and 1930-say about 1925-our territory,
at seventy-three and a thlird persons to the square mile, being of capacity
to contain two hundred and seventeen million one lhundred and eightysix thousand.
And we will reach this, too, if we do not ourselves relinquish the chance,
by the folly and evils of disunion, or by long and exhausting wars springing from the only great element of national discord among us. While it
cannot be foreseen exactly how much one huge example of secession,
breeding lesser ones indefinitely, would retard lpopulation, eiviization, and
prosperity, no one can doubt that the extent of it would be very great and
injurious.
The proposed emancipation would shorten the war, perpetilate peace,
insure this increase of population, and proportionately the wealth of the
country. With these we should pay all the emancipation would cost,
together with our other debt, easier than we should pay our other debt without it. If we had allowed our old national debt to run at six per cent. per
a;nnum, simple interest, from tile end of our Revolutionary struggle until
to-day, without paying any tiling on either principal or interest, each man
of us would owe less upon that debt now than each man owed upon it