western country doubles in five years, and the importations have uniformly in our country increased in a quicker ratio. It will be a very moderate computation to consider them as destined to advance at the rate of fifteen per cent. The average duty paid on imported articles is twenty-five per cent. From these data, it will result, that the following duties will be received.

The first column exhibits the sums received for duties; the second those sums with the addition of the accruing interest, in order to compare the probable profit with the probable expence; from which it follows that during a period of fifteen years duties will be received, which may be valued

at

And an expence incurred of

Leaving a profit of

$ 54,860,000

35,996,000

18,864,000

There remains to be considered the incalculable value of from two to four hundred millions of a

cres.

Viewed then in a pecuniary point of light, this event will be productive of a great national gain.

But we are told that this immense acquisition of territory will destroy the political importance of the eastern states, and is therefore unjust.

It is impossible to do justice to these points without descending into an extensive detail. Not attempting this we shall satisfy ourselves with offering a few considerations that evince the incorrectness of these fears.

The eastern states, viewed in the aspect of their numbers, had, before the cession, lost their comparative importance. In the year 1800, when the present census was taken, they were entitled to thirty-five representatives, while the middle states were entitled to fifty, the southern to forty-six, and the western to ten. It follows that, considering the confederacy as composed of certain great local sections, and the local interests of these sections as under the guaranty of their political power, the eastern section was already greatly inferior to either the middle or the southern. How then can it be said that this section will lose hereafter an importance, which it does not at this time possess. The only local competitors for power will be the middle, the southern and the western states. At present the middle states about balance the southern, and in a few years the western states will rise to an equality. And so far from the power of NewEngland suffering from these different interests, it will constitute a kind of umpire in their rivalries. The most active rivalries will unquestionably arise between the southern and western states, while there will be no source of jealousy between the

1

3

Add to

states of the east and those of the west. this the fact that the greater part of the population of the western country will arise out of emigrations from New England; and it will become apparent that the power of the western states, so far from uniting itself with that of the southern states, will be most apt to unite with that of the eastern. In this point of view, if our eastern brethren do really entertain the lively alarms, they express, of their southern brethren, they ought to hail this as the most auspicious event for them, which has ever occurred.

Want of leisure compels me here to suspend my remarks, and to decline the discussion of several interesting topics. The enquiries, which I prescribed to myself, on undertaking a defence of the measures of the administration, have grown in magnitude and importance at every step. Involved as those measures are equally with the present and future happiness of my country, I have not, under the cloak of cool argument, affected an indifference that I did not feel. It cannot be denied that on the success of the experiment now making depends the perpetuity of our republican institutions, and whether the United States shall establish a new era in the world, or shall follow the inglorious track marked by the career of other nations. Should her course be stained by the criminal excesses of power, the cause of human rights will have lost her only efficient advocate on earth; and in proportion to the lofty aspirations of our pride will be the humiliation of our disappointment. We shall fall, and liberty with us, never, no never to rise again.

Should, on the contrary, herpath be that of peace, and her ways those of justice, there is not an eminence of security or grandeur which she may not attain.

FINIS.