WILLIAMS' CASE,—3 BLAND. 261

But however desirable it may be to obtain correctly formed
tables of the expectation of life, as a means of estimating the
value * of life interests in property; yet, from the continual
oscillations of our population, it must be exceedingly diffi- 249
cult to make any correct observations as to the average rate of
mortality in any of our cities or counties, or even in any of the
States of our Union. 1 Malthus Pop. 22. The two strong ties,
poverty and wealth, which prevent migrations, have been often
broken by the oppressions of government in the old world; but in
our country the universal parental care of the government and the
equal distribution of property, lifting all above want, and dispers-
ing, at short intervals, the great accumulations of wealth, leave it
in the power of all to remove at pleasure; so that the peculiar
temptations of advantage offered by the various regions of our
country cause continual and most extraordinary shiftings of our
population.

It is admitted as regards even the comparatively stationary cir-
cumstances of the cities of Europe, that a large allowance must be
made for the adult population annually poured into them from the
country. 1 Malthus Pop. 468. But, as to the cities of this Union,
the annual accession of some of them from the country has been
so great as to confound all calculation. Philadelphia, perhaps, in
this respect, the most stationary among them, far exceeds any one
of Europe in its acquisitions from the country. Seybert Stat. Ann.
48. But the City of Baltimore, the great emporium of Maryland,
which was but a poor village in 1776, at this time, (1831,) contains
eighty thousand six hundred and twenty persons; and may be
regarded as almost an entirely new aggregation from abroad within
the ordinary term of human life. It would therefore be impossible,
as yet, to form any correct table of the expectation of life within
the City of Baltimore. Seybert Stat. Ann. 48; 2 Price Obser. Es-
say, 2.

The shiftings of the population of the several counties of Mary-
land have also been in many respects very extraordinary, and
altogether dissimilar from any thing observed of any district of
the country population of Europe. It appears, that, as a whole,
Maryland has continued greatly to increase in population from its
first settlement down to the last census, (1830;) and yet, that most
of the lower counties within which the main strength of the State
was found, during the Revolutionary War, have latterly diminished
in their population by having large portions of it, with a consider-
able increase, after deducting the great mass thrown into the new
regions of the West, shifted into the upper counties; great spaces
of which * were, during the Revolution, almost entirely an- 250t
inhabited. Seybert Stat. Ann. 37. And it also appears, from
the periodical enumerations made under the authority of the Union,
that although there are, every where, a much greater number of