s in a great measure upon the Western and Southern. The Eastern
States are the receivers and transporters of goods, and the carriers of
most of the produce of the Union. They advance money on the crops, and
charge high interest, commissions, etcetera. The transport and
travelling between the Eastern, Southern, and Western States, are one
great source of this prosperity, from the employment on the canals, rail
roads, and steam boats.

All these are heavy charges to the Western States, and can be avoided by
shipping direct from, and sending their produce direct to, the Old
Continent. As the Western States advance in wealth, so will they
advance in power, and in proportion as they so do, will the Eastern
States recede, until they will be left in a small minority, and will
eventually have little voice in the Union.

Here, then, is a risk of convulsion; for the clashing of interests, next
to a war, is the greatest danger to which a democracy can be exposed.
In a democracy, every one legislates, and every one legislates for his
own interests. The Eastern States will still be wealthy and formidable,
from their population; but the commerce of the principal Eastern cities
will decrease, and they will have little or no staple produce to return
to England, or elsewhere, whereas the Western States can produce every
thing that the heart of man can desire, and can be wholly independent of
them. They have, in the West, every variety of coal and mineral, to a
boundless extent; a rich alluvial soil, hardly to be exhausted by bad
cultivation, and wonderful facilities of transport; independent of the
staple produce of cotton, they might supply the whole world with grain;
sugar they already cultivate; the olive flourishes; wine is already
produced on the banks of the Ohio, and the prospect of raising silk is
beyond calculation. In a few days, the manufactures of the Old World
can find their way from the mouth of the Mississippi by its thousand
tributary streams, which run like veins through every portion of the
country, to the confines of Arkansas and Missouri, to the head of
navigation at St Peter's, on again to Wisconsin, Michigan, and to the
Northern lakes, at a _much cheaper rate_ than they are supplied at
present.

One really is lost in admiration when one surveys this great and
glorious Western country, and contemplates the splendour and riches to
which it must ultimately arrive.

As soon as the Eastern States are no longe