American Institutions and Their Influence

by Alexis de Tocqueville

{268} If the population continues to double every twenty-two years, as it has done for the last two hundred years, the number of inhabitants in the United States in 1852, will be twenty millions: in 1874, forty-eight millions; and in 1896, ninety-six millions. This may still be the case even if the lands on the western slope of the Rocky mountains should be found to be unfit for cultivation. The territory which is already occupied can easily contain this number of inhabitants. One hundred millions of men disseminated over the surface of the twenty-four states, and the three dependencies, which constitute the Union, would give only 702 inhabitants to the square league: this would be far below the mean population of France, which is 1,003 to the square league; or of England, which is 1,457; and it would even be below the population of Switzerland, for that country, notwithstanding its lakes and mountains, contains 783 inhabitants to the square league. (See Maltebrun, vol. vi., p. 92.)

{269} See Legislative Documents, 20th congress, No. 117, p. 105.

{270} 3,672,317; census 1830.

{271} The distance of Jefferson, the capital of the state of Missouri, to Washington, is 1,018 miles. (American Almanac, 1831, p. 40.)

{272} The following statements will suffice to show the difference which exists between the commerce of the south and that of the north:—

In 1829, the tonnage of all the merchant-vessels belonging to Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia (the four great southern states), amounted to only 5,243 tons. In the same year the tonnage of the vessels of the state of Massachusetts alone amounted to 17,322 tons. (See Legislative Documents, 21st congress, 2d session, No. 140, p. 244.) Thus the state of Massachusetts has three times as much shipping as the four abovementioned states. Nevertheless the area of the state of Massachusetts is only 7,335 square miles, and its population amounts to 610,014 inhabitants; while the area of the four other states I have quoted is 210,000 square miles, and their population 3,047,767. Thus the area of the state of Massachusetts forms only one thirtieth part of the area of the four states; and its population is five times smaller than theirs. (See Darby's View of the United States.) Slavery is prejudicial to the commercial prosperity of the south in several different ways; by diminishing the spirit of enterprise among the whites, and by preventing them from meeting with as numerous a class of sailors as they require. Sailors are generally taken from the lowest ranks of the population. But in the southern states these lowest ranks are composed of slaves, and it is very difficult to employ them at sea. They are unable to serve as well as a white crew, and apprehensions would always be entertained of their mutinying in the middle of the ocean, or of their escaping in the foreign countries at which they might touch.

{273} Darby's view of the United States, p. 444.

{274} It may be seen that in the course of the last ten years (1820-'30) the population of one district, as for instance, the state of Delaware, has increased in the proportion of 5 per cent.; while that of another, as the territory of Michigan, has increased 250 per cent. Thus the population of Virginia has augmented 13 per cent., and that of the border state of Ohio 61 per cent., in the same space of time. The general table of these changes, which is given in the National Calendar, displays a striking picture of the unequal fortunes of the different states.

{275} It has just been said that in the course of the last term the population of Virginia has increased 13 per cent.; and it is necessary to explain how the number of representatives of a state may decrease, when the population of that state, far from diminishing, is actually upon the increase. I take the state of Virginia, to which I have already alluded, as my term of comparison. The number of representatives of Virginia in 1823 was proportionate to the total number of the representatives of the Union, and to the relation which its population bore to that of the whole Union; in 1833, the number of representatives of Virginia was likewise proportionate to the total number of the representatives of the Union, and to the relation which its population, augmented in the course of ten years, bore to the augmented population of the Union in the same space of time. The new number of Virginian representatives will then be to the old number, on the one hand, as the new number of all the representatives is to the old number; and, on the other hand, as the augmentation of the population of Virginia is to that of the whole population of the country. Thus, if the increase of the population of the lesser country be to that of the greater in an exact inverse ratio of the proportion between the new and the old numbers of all the representatives, the number of representatives of Virginia will remain stationary; and if the increase of the Virginian population be to that of the whole Union in a feebler ratio than the new number of representatives of the Union to the old number, the number of the representatives of Virginia must decrease.

{276} See the report of its committees to the convention, which proclaimed the nullification of the tariff in South Carolina.