which can alone justify a positive
conclusion.

We will therefore state the results of some of our inquiries. The
number of slaves in the United States is rather under two
millions:[17] and the annual increase is something less than two and a
half _per centum_ on the population of the preceding year.[18] The
total increase per annum, is therefore short of fifty thousand. The
expense of transportation to Africa in merchant vessels will not
exceed thirty dollars per head, and to Hayti from ten to fifteen
dollars per head. The expense of transporting the increase, half to
each of the above named countries, would therefore be from one
million to one million one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars
yearly. If we add two dollars per head for corn to maintain the
emigrants until they can provide for themselves, the total expense
will not exceed one and one fourth million of dollars per annum.

The average annual revenue of the national government may be estimated
at twenty-three millions;[19] and the annual expenditure exclusive of
the public debt, is about twelve millions. As the public debt will be
extinct in four or five years, there will shortly be a surplus revenue
of about eleven millions yearly. One eighth of this sum will be
sufficient for transporting the whole increase of slave population.

Again: the annual expenditure of the Naval Department of the United
States, was estimated in 1827 at $4,263,877, and in 1828 at
$4,420,000. This expenditure is more than treble that of the same
department, at some periods of our history. Without expressing any
opinion of the propriety of this expenditure, a question not proper
for this Convention to decide, we may remark that rational men will
readily admit that it would be wiser to reduce the expenditure one
half, and abolish slavery, than to continue both the expenditure and
the servitude. A reduction of one half in the naval expenditures would
produce a fund of $2,200,000 per annum; a sum sufficient to transport
to Africa and Hayti, ninety thousand slaves per annum, or forty
thousand more than the annual increase. We offer this observation
merely in illustration of the ease with which the government _can_
command the necessary funds without any sacrifice that is not greatly
overbalanced by the importance of the subject. There would, however,
be no occasion for retrenching any of the present expenditures of the
government.

It has been suggested that the public vessels