Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/58

46 ment of New York, and in 1839, that of Virginia, made a new valuation of all the real property in their respective States. In 1798, all the real estate in Virginia was worth $ 71,225,127; in 1839, $ 211,930,538. In 1798, all the real property in the State of New York was worth $ 100,380,707; in 1835, $ 430,751,273. In Virginia there had been an increase of 195.7 per cent, in forty one years; in New York, an increase of 329.9 per cent, in thirty-seven years. For convenience' sake let us suppose each of the eight Southern States has gained as rapidly as Virginia, and each of those eight Northern, in the same ratio with New York—and what follows? In 1798, the real estate in South Carolina was valued at $ 17,465,013; that of Rhode Island at $ 11,066,358. By the above ratios, the real estate in South Carolina was worth $ 51,958,393 in 1839 ; and in 1835, that of Rhode Island was worth $47,574,288. Thus the real property in the leading slave State of the Union, with a population of 594,398, was worth but $ 4,384,105 more than the real property of Rhode Island, with a population of only 108,830. In 1840 the aggregate real property in the city of Boston was valued at $ 60,424,200, and in 1847 at $ 97,764,500,—$45,271,120 more than the computed value of all the real estate in South Carolina. In 1798, the value of the aggregate real property of the eight slave States was $197,742,557; of the eight free, $ 422,235,780; in 1839, by the above ratios, the real estate of the Southern States would be worth $ 588,289,107, and that of the Northern $1,715,201,618. Thus the real property of these eight free States would be almost three times more valuable than the eight slave States, yet the free contain but 170,150 square miles, while the slave States contain 212,920. But this, in part, is a matter of calculation only, and liable to some uncertainty, as the ratio of Virginia and New York may not represent the increase of any either South or North. Let us come to public and notorious facts.

In 1839, the value of all the annual agricultural products of the South, as valued by the last census, was $ 312,380,151; that of the free States $ 342,007,446. Yet in the South there were 1,984,866 persons engaged in agriculture, and in the North only 1,735,086, and the South