When compelled to acknowledge the superior prosperity of the free States, the slaveholders are fond of imputing the difference to tariffs, or to government patronage, or to any other than the true cause. Let us then inquire, whether the inferior and unhappy condition of the slave States can indeed be ascribed to any natural disadvantage under which they are laboring, or to any partial or unjust legislation by the Federal Government? In the first place, the slave States cannot pretend that they have not received their full share of the national domain, and that the narrowness of their territorial limits have retarded the development of their enterprise and resources. The area of the slave States is nearly _double_ that of the free. New York has acquired the title of the _Empire_ State; yet she is inferior in size to Virginia, Missouri, Georgia, Louisiana, or North Carolina. Nor can it be maintained that the free States are in advance of the slave States, because from an earlier settlement they had the start in the race of improvement. Virginia is not only the largest, but the _oldest_ settled State in the confederacy. She, together with Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina and South Carolina, were all settled before Pennsylvania. Nor will any slaveholder admit, for a moment, that Providence has scattered his gifts with a more sparing hand at the South than at the North. The richness of their soil, the salubrity of their climate, the number and magnitude of their rivers, are themes on which they delight to dwell; and not unfrequent is the contrast they draw between their own fair and sunny land, and the ungenial climate and sterile soil of the Northern and Eastern States. Hence the moral difference between the two sections of our republic must arise from other than natural causes. It appears also that this difference is becoming wider and wider. Of this fact we could give various proofs; but let one suffice. At the first census in 1790, the free population of the present free States and Territories was 1,930,125 " of the slave States and Territories, 1,394,847 --------- Difference, 535,278 By the last census, 1840, the same population in the free States and Territories was 9,782,415 In the slave States and Territories, 4,793,738 --------- Difference, 4,988,677 Thus it appears that in 1790 the free population of the South was 72 per cent. of that of the North, and that in 1840 it was only 49 per cent.; while the difference in 1840 is more than _nine_ times as great as it was in 1790.