In 1790, the population of the United States, including whites and free negroes, was 3,231,930.
The whole population in 1850, of whites and free colored persons, was 19,987,573.
From an interesting treatise, published by a foreigner in Washington, the remarkable fact appears to be demonstrated, that, excluding immigration, the population of the United States, in 1850, would have been 7,555,423, instead of 19,987,573--a difference in population of 12,432,150.
Extraordinary as this may appear, the author seems to have proved it by figures and facts which cannot readily be answered, and which show to our minds that the United States is no longer, and was not even as long ago as 1850, an American country.
Another writer, of opposite political views, testifies to the wonderful increase of the foreign element in the Northern States since 1850.
For a single year, 1853, the aggregate immigration of the United States, by land and sea, was not short of half a million of souls.
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emigrants.
Few persons are aware of all that immigration has accomplished for the West, and, indeed, for the United States in general.
Without that fertilizing addition to our population, the West would be now a wilderness, and the United States a fourth-rate power.
This assertion is not made at random.
It has been shown in an able statistical treatise that the difference in the population of the United States produced by immigration is 12,432,150.
If immigration had been cut off in 1790 our population would have been in 1850 what it was in 1820.
It has, in fact, placed the United States thirty years forward in that essential element of prosperity.
Hitherto, owing to the ignorance in Europe of the extraordinary resources of the South and the system of slave labor, this vast stream of immigration has only scattered a few drops within our borders.
Census returns show that six out of seven emigrants from Europe have settled in the free States.
Labor is now the vital dema
