If, fellow-citizens, with all the natural and political advantages we have enumerated, your progress is still downward, and has been so, compared with the other sections of the country, since the first organization of the Government, what are the anticipations of the distant future, which sober reflection authorizes you to form? The causes which now retard the increase of your population must continue to operate, so long as slavery lasts. Emigrants from the North, and from foreign countries, will, as at present, avoid your borders, within which no attractions will be found for virtue and industry. On the other hand, many of the young and enterprising among you will flee from the lassitude, the anarchy, the wretchedness engendered by slavery, and seek their fortunes in lands where law affords protection, and where labor is honored and rewarded. In the meantime, especially in the cotton States, the slaves will continue to increase in a ratio far beyond the whites, and will at length acquire a fearful preponderance. At the first census, in every slave State there was a very large majority of whites--now, the slaves out-number the whites in South Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana, and the next census will unquestionably add Florida and Alabama, and probably Georgia, to the number of negro States. And think you that this is the country, and this the age, in which the republican maxim that the MAJORITY must govern, can be long and barbarously reversed? Think you that the majority of the PEOPLE in the cotton States, cheered and encouraged as they will be by the sympathy of the world, and the example of the West Indies, will forever tamely submit to be beasts of burden for a few lordly planters? And remember, we pray you, that the number and physical strength of the negroes will increase in a much greater ratio than that of their masters. In 1790 the whites in N. Carolina were to the slaves as 2.80 to 1, now as 1.97 to 1 " S. Carolina, " 1.31 to 1, " .79 to 1 " Georgia, " 1.76 to 1, " 1.44 to 1 " Tennessee, " 13.35 to 1, " 3.49 to 1 " Kentucky, " 5.16 to 1, " 3.23 to 1