III.

This rate of increase observed among the blacks of our Slave States is not seen among the population of the West India Islands, where singular oscillations are exhibited, and the statistics of the past two centuries have inclined two of the most eminent European statisticians to assert that in a century the negro will nearly have disappeared from these islands.

Observations at Martinique and Guadaloupe certainly warrant the inference. In Cuba the blacks decreased four or five thousand during the period of 1804 to 1817.

This decrease or stand-still in the progress of the race in these regions may have been caused by conditions, moral or physical, wholly within the control of man.

There are animals who will not propagate and continue their species whilst in a state of servitude, and it is reasonable to believe that the same moral causes affect the condition of enslaved mankind. Naturalists have shown how the evils of Slavery degrade animals, and Buffon has pointed out the deep and conspicuous impressions it has made upon the camel.