nd gradually extinguish the war debt,
would be $161,596,160; whereas, judging by Virginia and New York, the
diminished increase of the annual product of capital, as the result of
slavery, is 2.8 per cent., or $452,469,250 per annum, equal in a decade,
without compounding the annual results, to $4,524,692,500.

That our population would have reached in 1860 nearly 40,000,000, and
our wealth have been more than doubled, if slavery had been extinguished
in 1790, is one of the revelations made by the census; whilst in
science, in education, and national power, the advance would have been
still more rapid, and the moral force of our example and success would
have controlled for the benefit of mankind the institutions of the
world.

By table 36, p. 196, of the census of 1860, the _cash_ value of the
farms of Virginia was $371,096,211, being $11.91 per acre, and of New
York $803,343,593, being $38.26 per acre. Now, by the table, the number
of acres embraced in these farms of New York was 20,992,950, and in
Virginia 31,014,950, the difference of value per acre being $26.36, or
much more than 3 to 1 in favor of New York. Now, if we multiply this
number of acres of farm lands of Virginia by the New York value, it
would make the total value of the farm lands of New York $1,186,942,136,
and the _additional_ value caused by emancipation $815,845,925. Now the
whole number of slaves in Virginia in 1860, was 490,865; multiplying
which by $300 as their average value, would be $147,259,500, leaving
$668,586,425 as the sum by which Virginia would be richer in farms
alone, if slavery were abolished. But, stupendous as is this result in
regard to lands, it is far below the reality. We have seen that the farm
lands of Virginia, improved and unimproved, constituted 31,014,950
acres. By the census and the land-office tables, the area of Virginia is
39,265,280 acres. Deduct the farm lands, and there remain unoccupied
8,250,330 acres. Now, Virginia's population to the square mile being
26.02, and that of New York 84.36, with an equal density in Virginia,
more than two thirds of these Virginia lands, as in New York, must have
been occupied as farms. This would have been equivalent, at two thirds,
to 5,500,000 acres, which, at their present average value of $2 per
acre, would be worth $11,000,000; but, at the value per acre of the New
York lands, these 5,500,000 acres would be worth $206,430,000. Deduct
from this their present value, $11,000,000,