e miles. Europe has 3,800,000, with a population averaging 73 persons
to the square mile. Why may not our country at some time average as many?
Is it less fertile? Has it more waste surface by mountains, rivers,
lakes, deserts, or other causes? Is it inferior to Europe in any natural
advantage? If, then, we are at some time to be as populous as Europe, how
soon? As to when this may be, we can judge by the past and the present;
as to when it will be, if ever, depends much on whether we maintain the
Union...............

[a page of tables of projected statistics]

These figures show that our country may be as populous as Europe now is
at some point between 1920 and 1930, say about 1925--our territory, at 73
persons to the square mile, being of capacity to contain 217,186,000.

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 war 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 population, civilization, and
prosperity, no one can doubt that the extent of it would be very great and
injurious.

The proposed emancipation would shorten the war, perpetuate 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 annum, simple interest, from the end of our revolutionary
struggle until to-day, without paying anything on either principal or
interest, each man of us would owe less upon that debt now than each man
owed upon it then; and this because our increase of men through the
whole period has been greater than six per cent.--has run faster than the
interest upon the debt. Thus time alone relieves a debtor nation, so long
as its population increases faster than unpaid interest accumulates on its
debt.

This fact would be no excuse for delaying payment of what is justly due,
but it shows the great importance of time in this connection--the great
advantage of a policy by which we shall not have to pay until we number
100,000,000 what by a different policy we would have to pay now, when
we number but 31,000,000. In a word, it shows that a dollar will be mu