6760. POPULATION, Extension of.—
The present population of the inhabited parts
of the United States is of about ten to the
square mile; and experience has shown us,
that wherever we reach that, the inhabitants
become uneasy, as too much compressed, and
so go off in great numbers to search for vacant
country. Within forty years their whole territory
will be peopled at that rate. We may fix
that, then, as the term beyond which the people
of those States will not be restricted within
their present limits; we may fix that population,
too, as the limit which they will not exceed till
the whole of those two continents are filled up
to that mark, that is to say, till they shall contain
one hundred and twenty millions of inhabitants.—
To M. de Meunier. Washington ed. ix, 275.
Ford ed., iv, 180.
(P.
1786)
