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CHAPTER XI.

OF EMIGRATION TO NORTH AMERICA, PROVED BY ITS EFFECTS ON THE RELATIVE NUMBERS OF THE DIFFERENT SEXES AND AGES, IN THE CENSUSES OF THE VARIOUS STATES.

(1) THE relative proportions which the numbers in the different divisions in the American censuses exhibit, prove also the existence of a vast and incessant emigration to that country. The super-proportion in the numbers of the former or younger divisions of the census, to the later or older ones, is so great, when compared with the same section in the censuses of this or of any other European country, and when examined at the distance of a single generation only from each other, (excluding, therefore, from the comparison, the effect of any second or geometric increase,) as totally to negative the idea, that any supposable difference in the relative number of marriages, or their possible prolificness, could have occasioned it. I am aware that Mr. Milne has professed to demonstrate from these relative. numbers in the censuses, that America increases independently of emigration, and consequently by procreation only, so as to double in geometric progression every twenty-five years; and I had paid some considerable attention to the proofs he advances, with a view to their refutation; but having, in a subsequent part of this treatise, shown, beyond, I think, the possibility of a doubt, that the demonstration involves a series of palpable impossibilities, it is unnecessary any further to refute the hypothesis on which

they are founded; I, therefore, suppress what I had written in relation to it. But these striking variations in the American censuses, compared with the European ones, still remain, and have to be accounted for. I proceed to shew that they constitute an additional proof of the existence and great extent of emigration; not meaning, however, to contend that a greater degree both of prolificness and of mortality contributes, but in a slighter proportion, to the same effect. But let us first present the differences in question. They are, comparing the English, Welsh, and American censuses together, as follows:

TABLE V.

SHEWING THE PROPORTION OF THE NUMBERS OF EACH SEX, AT THE AGE SPECIFIED, IN EVERY 20,000 OF THE POPULATION OF ENGLAND, WALES, AND THE UNITED STATES, COMPUTED on the CENSUSES OF THOSE COUNTRIES IN 1820.

Ages.

ENGLAND.

WALES.

UNITED STATES.

under 10 2819 2770 5589

2637

981 2855 2723 5578 953 3422 3257 6679 932 10 to 16 1351 1286 952 1395 1330 2725 953 1558 1539 3097 957 16 to 26 1687 1900 3587 1126 1682 1827

3509 1086 1975 1988 3963 1005] 4302 1118 1951 1874 3825

38861145 1259 1177 2436 933

Totals 9784 10,216 20,000 1044 9773 10,227 20,000 1035 10,165 983320,000 96

To exhibit the same comparison in the same country, I will add,

TABLE VI.

SHEWING THE PROPORTIONATE NUMBERS OF EACH SEX, at the AGES SPECIFIED, IN EVERY 20,000 OF THE FREE COLOURED and Free WHITE POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES.

Totals. 9658 10,342 20,000 1070 10,165 9835 20,000 967

1508 1617 3125 1072 1259 1177 2436 935

(2) It is unnecessary to particularize the great difference the preceding tables exhibit; it is sufficiently apparent that the numbers in the more advanced periods of life are, in the American census, beyond all due proportion, smaller than those of corresponding ages in the European ones; or even than in that of the free coloured population, where the rate of mortality is at least as great, and that of prolificness hardly any smaller, if we may judge any thing as to that fact, from comparing the first and second divisions together the children under 14, compared with the persons between 14 and 26, being, in the free white population, as 178, and in the free coloured, as 177, to every hundred. In the succeeding divisions, (those of more advanced ages,) the deficiencies in the census of the United States are most conspicuous, compared even with the free coloured popula

tion of the same country, much more with that of Europe; and these deficiencies are attributable in great measure to emigration, and constitute a proof of it.

(3) It appears, at first sight, that the afflux of a considerable number of emigrants in the prime of life, to any country, would have the effect of increasing the relative number of the inhabitants, at the particular age at which they emigrated, and of the succeeding stages of life to which they should survive; but a little consideration will dissipate this error, and shew, that directly the contrary is the effect, at least as it regards the older divisions of the census. It is true, the classes under consideration would be numerically increased by the amount of such accessions, but the relative proportion of those in the more advanced periods of life, calculated on the entire number of the population, would be diminished; and this is the point at issue. It is one, moreover, to which the reader's attention is more particularly directed; as, in its consequences, it forms another most important branch of the argument hereafter to be considered. It is unnecessary to repeat, that emigrants, generally speaking, are composed of individuals in the prime of life, usually single young men, who, as Franklin says, marry and settle in their adopted country." Dr. Seybert has pointed our attention to the fact of a surplus of females at the marrying period, in the United States, and we need no authority to inform us, that people in the prime of life, and especially in America, marry, or that marriages are prolific. Nay, if they are already married, and take their families with them, the argument is not in the least impaired, so long as it is admitted, that the great mass of those who change their country are little beyond the meridian of existence.

Emigration, therefore, adds to the prolific, and consequently to the juvenile classes also; but it does not increase the effete ones, if I may so term those who are no longer prolific. But to state the argument more familiarly. Very few grandfathers or grandmothers, it is presumed, emigrate; nor, comparatively speaking, many fathers and mothers; though the latter circumstance would little affect the question, as, in that case, they would remove with their children. Emigrants, nevertheless, are not Melchizedeks; they have had parents, and, considering their average age, many have still surviving ones. All their fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers, who have not accompanied them, but who still live in the countries from whence they come, are evidently wanting in the latter divisions of the American censuses, and to those divisions, their entire number must be added, before it be possible to deduce from them the rate of human increase from "procreation only." After these emigrants shall have themselves become advanced in life, so as to be numbered among the terminating divisions of the census, it is clear, that their natural proportion of descendants would be found in the younger divisions, and consequently, the order and proportion of the generations would then be entire. But, in the mean time, it is quite plain that an accession of emigrants at the prime of life, or about that period, must of necessity diminish the relative numbers of all beyond that stage of existence. Hence the deficiencies in the terminating divisions of the American censuses, instead of affording any demonstration of the rate of increase prevailing there, are in full proof of the existence of emigration, and the degree in which they occur indicates the magnitude of these accessions.