If the subject assumes colossal proportions when we regard the extent of territory, it swells to yet grander form when we look at the population involved. The whole white population of the United States at the present moment amounts to 27,000,000. Supposing it to increase at the rate of 34 per cent in ten years, which may be inferred from the rate at which it has already increased, it will number in 1870, 36,000,000; in 1880, 48,000,000; in 1890, 64,000,000; in 1900, 85,000,000; in 1910, 113,000,000; in 1920, 151,000,000; in 1930, 202,000,000; in 1940, 270,000,000; in 1950, 361,000,000; and in 1960, just one hundred years from now, it will reach 483,000,000 of white freemen. Here we may well stop to take breath. Add to this white population 50,000,000 of colored population, whether free or slave, according to the supposed increase, and we shall have a sum-total of 533,000,000; and in two hundred years, with the same continuing rate of increase, our population will be ten times larger than that of the whole globe at the present hour. This extraordinary multitude will not be confined to the present States. It will diffuse itself in every direction, covering all our territory as the waters cover the sea. Precisely how it will be distributed it is impossible to foreknow. But the tendency of population is Westward. The Eastern States are becoming stationary. Assuming that in 1960 the area now unoccupied will be settled at the rate of Massachusetts in 1850, which was 127 to the square mile, we shall then have on that territory a white population of 190,000,000. And the simple question is, Whether this enormous territory, with this enormous population, shall be exposed to all the accumulating evils of Slavery, with their hateful legacy, at the mere will of the handful of first settlers? According to a French proverb, “It is only the first step which costs,” and there is profound truth in this saying. In similar spirit the ancient Romans said, _Obsta principiis_, “Oppose beginnings.”