deaths in the five old slave States, than
there is in the six New England States.

New England, with an equal population, and eleven thousand five hundred
and sixty-four more families, has sixteen thousand five hundred and
thirty-four less annual births, and ten thousand one hundred and
fifty-two more annual deaths, than these five sickly old Southern slave
States. The annual births in New England are sixty-one thousand one
hundred and forty-eight; and in the five slave States seventy-seven
thousand six hundred and eighty-three. In New England the annual deaths
are forty-two thousand three hundred and sixty-eight; in the five slave
States thirty-two thousand two hundred and sixteen.

In New England the ratio of births is one to forty-four; in the five
slave States one to thirty-five. In New England the ratio of deaths is
one to sixty-four; in the five slave States it is one to eighty-five.

The slaves are not in this estimate of births and deaths; they are in
the census, however, and that shows that they multiply considerably
faster, and are less liable to die than the freemen of New England.

Here are facts which contradict all history and all experience. In a
sickly Southern climate, among slaveholders, people actually multiply
faster, and die slower, than they do among freemen without slavery, in
one of the purest and healthiest Northern climates in the world. How is
this to be accounted for? Why do people multiply rapidly? Is it because
they live in a healthy climate? Why do they die rapidly? Is it because
they live in a sickly climate? Our census contradicts both suppositions.
Where, then, does the cause lie? Will excluding slavery from a
community cause them to multiply more rapidly and die slower? The
census says, No!

The census testifies that the proportion of births is twenty-seven per
cent. greater, and the proportion of deaths thirty-three per cent. less,
among slaveholders, in a community where slavery has existed for more
than two hundred years, under all the disadvantages of a sickly climate,
than among free men in the pure climate of New England. A man, in his
right mind, will demand an explanation of these astonishing facts. They
are easily explained. The census discloses a degree of _poverty_ in New
England, which scatters seventy thousand families to the four winds of
heaven, and _feeds_ (as we shall presently see) the _poor-house_, with
one hundred and thirty-five per cent. more of paupers than i