The population of the thirteen American States before the war
was reckoned at about three millions. Nobody imagines that Great
Britain is less populous at present for the emigration of the
small parent stock that produced these numbers. On the contrary,
a certain degree of emigration is known to be favourable to the
population of the mother country. It has been particularly
remarked that the two Spanish provinces from which the greatest
number of people emigrated to America, became in consequence more
populous. Whatever was the original number of British emigrants
that increased so fast in the North American Colonies, let us
ask, why does not an equal number produce an equal increase in
the same time in Great Britain? The great and obvious cause to be
assigned is the want of room and food, or, in other words,
misery, and that this is a much more powerful cause even than
vice appears sufficiently evident from the rapidity with which
even old states recover the desolations of war, pestilence, or
the accidents of nature. They are then for a short time placed a
little in the situation of new states, and the effect is always
answerable to what might be expected. If the industry of the
inhabitants be not destroyed by fear or tyranny, subsistence will
soon increase beyond the wants of the reduced numbers, and the
invariable consequence will be that population which before,
perhaps, was nearly stationary, will begin immediately to
increase.

The fertile province of Flanders, which has been so often the
seat of the most destructive wars, after a respite of a few
years, has appeared always as fruitful and as populous as ever.
Even the Palatinate lifted up its head again after the execrable
ravages of Louis the Fourteenth. The effects of the dreadful