But this certainly is not the full strength of the case. There is no good reason to believe that the natural increase of the free colored population is even 121/4 per cent. in ten years, but much for suspecting that even this apparent increase is the result of emancipation, either by the slave's own act, or by the consent of the master. If we take our departure from Chicago, make the tour of the lakes to the point where the boundary line of New York and Pennsylvania intersects the shore of Lake Erie, thence pass along the southern boundary of New York, till it intersects the Hudson river, thence along that river and the Atlantic coast to the southern boundary of Virginia, thence along the southern boundaries of Virginia and Kentucky to the Mississippi, thence along that river to the point where the northern boundary of Illinois intersects it, and thence along that boundary and the shore of Lake Michigan to the place of departure, we shall have embraced within the line described ten of the thirty-four States of the Union. By an examination of Table 42, already referred to, it will be seen that outside of those ten States the free colored population not only did not increase between 1840 and 1850, but actually diminished, and that all the increase of that decade was in those ten States. Why then was there an increase in those ten States, while in the other twenty-four there was an actual decrease? I think this question can only be answered by ascribing that increase to emancipation. In Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware, slavery is unprofitable and declining, and acts of emancipation frequently occur. Pennsylvania and New Jersey, before the passage of the fugitive slave law of 1850, were favorite resorts of fugitives, perhaps partly on account of the known sympathies of the Quakers. Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, were also resorted to by fugitives, both on account of their easy accessibility from adjacent Slave States, and their proximity to Canada, and also because such labor as a fugitive from slavery is best able to do, is there always in demand. These States have also received thousands of colored persons, brought to them by humane and conscientious masters, for the very purpose of emancipating them. From 1850 to 1860 the facts are still more striking. The increase which occurred was not, as would have been true of a natural increase, scattered over our whole territory, and in some proportion to the colored population previously existing, but almost wholly, either where the unprofitableness and decline of slavery was leading to emancipation, or where from any cause the fugitive slave law of 1850 was not strictly enforced. Examples of the former are Maryland, Virginia, and Missouri, and of the latter are Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, and even Massachusetts and Connecticut, in the latter of which it had been declining for twenty years previous.