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.