262 WILLIAMS' CASE.—3 BLAND.

males than females born; yet the diminution of the males as they
reach maturity, within many of the counties of this State, the
salubrity of which has not been at all changed, is much more rapid
than elsewhere, owing to the great emigration from them to the
West. From a comparative view of the census of the several
States of the Union, it will be seen, that in the elder and most
densely peopled of them, the males are most numerous; while in
those from which there has been the greatest emigration, and in
the newest and frontier States there are not, in many instances,
so many as ninety females to every hundred males. Seybert Stat.
Ann. 40, 42, 45. Whence it appears, that now, as in the original
peopling of Virginia by the English, the first plantings every
where in this country, by enticing away the males, or bringing
together a much larger proportion of adult males than females,
has, by thus separating the sexes, so far operated as a check, in-
stead of an encouragement, to the natural increase of population.
1 Burk's His. Virg. 206; 1 Malthus Popu. 6; 2 Malthus Popu. 54.

The making' of all observations as to the expectation of human
life here are, however, not only rendered difficult by the extraordi-
nary shifting of our population; but those difficulties are much
increased by the changes continually going on in the salubrity of
many situations in our country. The territory of Maryland, when
the first settlers seated themselves upon it, was every where covered
by a thick and lofty forest, and drained by innumerable rivulets,
creeks and rivers all pouring into the great Chesapeake. A ter-
ritory so shaded, and so netted with humid valleys and water-
courses, many of them descending from rugged and elevated moun-
tains, under a climate, ranging from such high degrees of heat in
summer, to such low degrees of cold in winter, it is evident, must
have been, in its primitive state, productive of causes affecting
human life differing materially in malignity from those which had
been found to arise over any equal space of Europe. But the
active civilized people who took possession of Maryland as they
increased in numbers and advanced, felled large spaces of the
forest and laid bare, drained, and cultivated the soil. These ope-
rations by changing the state of things, may have produced some
* changes in the climate; and have, no doubt, been attended
251 by some ameliorations in the salubrity of the country which,
it is more than probable, will continue to go on until our popula-
tion becomes as dense as that of the best portions of Europe.
Darby's View V. S. 421,427; Hume's Essays; Of the Populousness
of Ancient Nations; Tailor's Arator, Number 51, Draining.

The African race, in our country, are, in many respects, materi-
ally different from the European. The negro constitution has in
it something peculiarly calculated to resist that malaria which is
so deadly to the whites. A negro, it is well known, will enjoy
good health during some seasons and in many situations in which