The average increase of the slaves has been a little over 21/2 per cent. per annum, or exactly two and sixty-hundredths.  The census tables for the whole period up to 1840, indicates that the natural increase of the free colored population is somewhat less than that of the slave.  I shall suppose it to be 21/2 per cent. per annum.  The excess of increase over 21/2 will, therefore, represent the emancipations.  In applying this rule, it appears that the work of emancipation must have been actively prosecuted from 1790 to 1810.

“From 1810 to 1820 the rate of increase was reduced to a little less than 21/2, or exactly two and forty-seven hundredths per cent. per annum.  This indicates that emancipation had ceased to swell, in any appreciable degree, the number of free colored persons, unless we are forced to admit that there is greater mortality amongst freedmen than slaves.  This cessation of emancipation was before the organization of the Colonization Society.  It is supposed to have been caused by the conviction that emancipation upon the soil had wrought but little change in the colored man’s condition.  The sympathies of good men were therefore awakened in behalf of the colored man, and colonization proposed and adopted, as the best means of securing to him the social and political privileges of which he was deprived.  The establishment of an independent republic, including a population of 80,000 souls, with foreign exports to the value of $100,000 a year, and the introduction of civilization and Christianity in Africa, with all their attendant blessings, furnishes an answer to the question of the success of the scheme.

“The period of the greatest popularity of the Colonization Society, was from 1820 to 1830.  During this time, the increase of the free colored population reached to nearly 3 per cent. or a half per cent. per annum over the natural increase.  But from 1830 to 1840, the period when the Society had the least popularity, the increase was but a very small fraction over two per cent. per annum, being two and eight hundredths, indicating that fewer bondmen had been liberated than during any other period.  Indeed, the decrease was so great as to reduce the rate of increase more than a half per cent. per annum below the natural increase of the slaves, and furnished an argument in favor of the idea, that freedom in this country is unfavorable to the longevity of the colored man.  From all these facts, we may infer that colonization, while its object has been to benefit the free colored man, has not been unfavorable to emancipation.

“But colonization has not removed the 450,000 free persons of color from our country.  They remain as a floating body in our midst, drifting, as the census tables show, hither and thither, as the effects of climate at the north, or foreign emigration at the east, or prejudice at the south, repel it from those