The task is certainly a high and holy one, and eminently necessary. How far it will be sustained by the Government or the people, or how far the purpose can be carried out with a race who have been intentionally kept in profound ignorance, is part of the great problem that we are to solve. But not all of it, by any means. There is much more for enlightened patriotism and wise humanity yet to do, before the task shall be accomplished and the work begun by the Revolution shall be finished; and to prevent a conflict of races, which can end only in the extermination of one or the other. The 16,000,000 of natives who were once masters of this whole continent are now dwindled into a few insignificant tribes, 'away among the mountains.' Is such to be the fate of the negro also? Or has the spirit of God's charity so far progressed among us that, unlike our fathers, we can redeem rather than destroy, can emancipate rather than enslave? Be the answer to those questions what it may, there are other considerations, immediately affecting ourselves as a nation and a race. Slavery would seem to retard our advancement in both respects. During the ten years from 1850 to 1860, the total population of our country increased about 37 per cent. In 1790, there were seventeen States in the Union, and of those seventeen, eight are now slave States, and the following table of those States will show how the increase of slavery retards the advance of the whites: Ratio of Ratio of Free Whites. Increase Slaves. Increase 1850. 1860. 1850. 1860. Delaware, 71,169 110,548 56 2,290 1,805 * Georgia, 521,572 615,336 18 381,682 467,461 23 Kentucky, 761,417 933,707 22 210,981 225,902 7 Maryland, 417,943 646,183 55 90,368 85,382 * N. Carolina, 552,028 679,965 23 288,548 328,377 14 S. Carolina, 274,567 308,186 9 384,984 407,185 7 Tennessee, 756,753 859,528 14 239,460 287,112 20 Virginia, 894,800 1097,373 23 472,628 495,826 5 * Decrease. From these facts, it would seem that, in the two States in which slavery has decreased, the increase of the whites has been 55 and 56 per cent, exceeding the average ratio of increase in the whole nation. While in all the other States, where slavery has increased, none of them have come up to the average national ratio of increase, and in one of them, (South-Carolina,) the increase is not one quarter the national average.