have, notwithstanding all, done more to strengthen the central power than any period since the war of 1812. There is a steady growth of nationality among our people, a feeling that the States are merged in the Nation, and owe their power, importance and dignity in the eyes of the world to the Union and the General Government. The more frequent our intercourse with foreign powers, and the more plainly we see ourselves recognized as a great pow. er by the other nations of the world, the greater must be our disposition to maintain the national existence, to which we owe our importance. Painful as the suspense was which attended the discussion of the North-Eastern boundary, and the Oregon question, who can doubt that those difficulties, and the treaties that resulted from them, by bringing our nation into direct comparison in diplomacy, in spirit, and in generosity, with Great Britain, did a great deal to strengthen our bonds at home, which are never weak, except when through prosperity we become forgetful of their value? The grow⚫ing disposition abroad, to think and speak of us as one people, will, doubtless, increase the disposition at home to continue such. Add to this, that the importance of the real subjects of dispute or jealousy is daily lessening.

There is, probably, no subject which has jeopardized the union of these States so much as slavery. But the principal danger was at the outset of the discussion. The firmness and constitutional fidelity which the North and West have shown in regard to that institution, have quieted the apprehensions of the South. It has become perfectly plain, that no intention exists, anywhere in this country, to violate the chartered rights of the South. The policy agreed to by the North and West, is one in which the South itself concurs, if we may judge the matter by the course of their Coryphæus, Mr. Calhoun, viz. to abide by the compromises of the Constitution. Every indication exists, that abolition excitement has reached its head, and is exploding in every kind of extravagance and ultraism, until the calm and wise heads and hearts of the country are utterly alienated from all cooperation with it. Soon the economic view of the question, is to become the absorbing one, and the moment South

ern intelligence takes this question into its own hands, healthier and more dispassionate views will be entertained on the subject at large, and the bands of union among the States will, we are persuaded, be drawn closer than ever. Every one must see that the cotton, sugar, and tobacco staples are every day losing their relative and preponderating importance among the exports of the country. It is perfectly plain, that the exports of the grain-growing regions-large portions of which belong to the middle and southern states from this time forward must render the country less dependent, for credit in foreign markets, upon the more particular products of the South. This very month brings us fifteen millions in exchange from England, in return for our flour and meal. The Indian corn crop-a great Southern and Western staple-is already half as valuable as the cotton crop. The maple sugars of Vermont, New York and Ohio, exercise not a great but a decided influence upon the demand for Southern sugars. Tobacco, as is well known, is not more than half as valuable as it was, as the crop rapidly exhausts the lands producing it, which are then chiefly turned to the production of corn. These causes combined, must make the South less peculiar in its interests, less separate in its position, more inclined to compromise or co-operate with the other portions of the Union. Even now, a certain degree of attention to manufactures in Maryland, Virginia, and Tenneɛsee, shows that the entire reliance upon these staples is no longer practicable; and the Memphis Convention indicates clearly enough that the jealousy of Northern interests, the thorough antitariff policy, the anti-internal improvement war, are no longer to be uncompromisingly maintained. From these general and various considerations, we infer that disunion is not likely to proceed from the discussion of slavery, or from conflict. of interests. To industrial change, bringing about a great community of labor and production, do we confidently look for the gradual dissipation of all sectional prejudices, in every part of the Union, and the growth in their stead of a lasting community of interest and regard.

Mr. Vinton, of Ohio, in one of the most pregnant speeches* ever made on the floor of Congress, laid down some

ghany rivers, to the head waters of the Missouri will always contain the heart and seat of the population of the Union." Of course it ought to have and will have the chief political power, and therefore it is a great question whether it is safe that the balance of power in this Union should lie there. Mr. Vinton, we repeat, has demonstrated this safety. He has shown, that the West is completely and forever dependent upon the markets of the Atlantic on the one hand and on the market of New Orleans on the other, so that it is impossible she should ever "inflict an injury upon the North or the South with out feeling the full and fatal recoil of the blow she strikes." The East has understood this practically; as the Erie canal, the Western railroad, the Pennsylvania lines of internal connection with the Ohio river sufficiently attest. And the resolutions passed at the Memphis Convention show that Southern abstractions vanish before the touch of sober interests. Mr. Calhoun, wisely, if not consistently, teaches that the Mississippi river is an inland ocean, and as much entitled to the care of the general government as Lake Erie or the Chesapeake Bay; and he lays out a system of railways uniting the Mississippi with Savannah and Charleston, which rival the roads of Massachusetts in complexity of members and unity of result, to which he invites the patronage of government to the extent of a surrender of every other section of land, wherever the roads run through its territory, besides a remission of duties on railroad iron, equivalent to a bounty of $2,000 a mile.*

It is evident, then, that the prosperity of the West is bound up with the prosperity of the East and of the South. She must have a free, a regular, a constant and an increasing trade with the Atlantic, either by New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico, or through the lakes and the railroads across the country to the sea-board. There never was an hour when she could have fully felt how wholly dependent she is upon the East and her commerce until the present, when the starving population of Ireland, of France, of Scotland, are crying for her breadstuffs, and when Eastern ships can alone bring the West and her foreign customers together. The home market she finds, too, is constantly increasing in import

ance, and the West is therefore deeply interested in so far maintaining the system of manufactures by which the East thrives, as to allow the Northern Atlantic States to depend even more than they now do upon the Western granary. The West cannot intelligently suffer the Protective tariff to be destroyed by Southern prejudice; for every Eastern factory is her customer and puts a portion of its gains into her treasury. The home market is the sure market. The failure of foreign crops may give a temporary extra importance to what is always of much importance, the Transatlantic market; but a population regularly and increasingly dependent for its food upon the West is a more valuable customer. And the West must see this too clearly to adopt the ultra Free-trade notions of the South, which begins to flinch itself, as is apparent from the Memphis Convention.

If we add to this the evident mediatorial position of the West in respect to slavery, its half-way post in regard to all questions that divide the North and South, both in manners, sympathies, tastes, climate, democratic temper, and general civilization, we shall see a wonderful adaptation in its condition to allay the causes of mutual jealousy or hostility between other portions of the confederacy and to hold them for its own sake, if for no other reason, in peace and concord. For these reasons it would appear safe and desirable that the balance of power should pass to the West; and no danger to the Union is to be apprehended from the sudden and rapid growth of population and power in the valley of the Mississippi.

But,

At this time greater apprehensions are doubtless felt for the permanency of the Union, from the spirit of conquest which seems to have seized our government, than from all other causes. The annexation of Texas seemed to be a disturbance of the mutual dependence of the parts of the country on each other. bating the extension it gave to slavery it did not really add a centrifugal territory to the Union, seeing that its connection with and dependence upon us, is much more direct and natural than with Mexico, from which it is divided by deserts and mountains. If that accession had not involved us in an unjust war and made it probable that the Southern

Question will be again agitated, we should be reconciled to it. We think the purchase of California would not be an unwise investment, for the sake of its ports alone-for its soil every day grows leaner and leaner as we acquire more reliable information in regard to it. But we have no apprehensions that the boundary of the United States will extend, for some generations, below the Nueces. If we owned territory there we could do nothing with it. Our population will have no tendency to run over in that direction until it has filled up many much more inviting and convenient territories. It is plain enough that the Administration are now looking out for a creditable opportunity of withdrawing our forces and of getting out of the Mexican scrape with as little more waste of powder and treasury notes as possible. We consider the aggressive war to be over in that direction, and are every day looking for the result of secret negotiations ending in peace. It is plain that the South has no interest in pressing the war. The North is wholly opposed to it. The West has nothing but a sort of 54° 40' excitement to work off in fight. The party is sick of it, and it is difficult to see what can induce or support the Administration in carrying it on. It can make no capital out of it. It has not been able to make a party question out of the supplies. The victors have been Whig generals. The treasury needs nursing. Mr. Polk is the object of universal abuse on both sides of the water and from all parties, and we are therefore convinced that the war must be brought to a close, not speedily to be resumed in that direction. We have very little fear, therefore, that an extension of our territory South by conquest, is to trouble us for a long time to come. It is as sure as the coming of time, that our people is destined to spill over on to Mexican soil as soon as the habitable portions of the West are filled up. Mr. Crittenden, in one of his happiest efforts in the Senate, ridiculed the idea, which the French Chambers with true French abstractionizing were then discussing of the importance of preserving the balance of power by strengthening the antagonistic or anti-United States powers on this continent-by quoting the former advice which the Minister of

Foreign Affairs had given to Louis XV., to form an alliance with the Cherokees, in order to head our progress over the Alleghany Mountains! He well asked, what was to head the peaceful inevitable spread of a population which fifty years would change from twenty to a hundred millions? It is calculated, we believe, that the advance of the tide of population upon the Western frontier is at the rate of seventeen miles annually. It becomes a simple calculation, how soon, at this rate, we shall reach the Pacific ocean. And long before that time our cup must run over in the southern direction. That Mexico will ultimately fall a political prey, not to force, but to a superior population, insensibly oozing into her territories, changing her customs, and out-living, out-trading, exterminating her weaker blood, we regard with as much certainty, as we do the final extinction of the Indian races, to which the mass of the Mexican population seem very little superior; and we have no reason to doubt that this country will not have doubled its three centuries of existence, before South America will speak the English tongue and submit to the civilization, laws and religion of the Anglo-Saxon race. We, as a great civilized and Christian nation, have only to use all endeavors to have this tide of population regular and peace. ful in its course-with no violence, or spirit of conquest; its sure progress we cannot help.

Such are some of the reasons for believing that the dissolution of the Union is less probable now than at any previous date of our existence, and thus that the only evil which seemed to cloud the glorious destiny before our race in this New World is not impending.

We have many things to say respecting the operation of the Institutions for which we have ventured to predict permanency, and on which for general reasons we set so lofty a value. The influence of the Democratic sentiment upon our social condition and our personal character is a theme rich in suggestions. We hope to meet our readers, at such intervals as convenience requires, upon this ground, to consider together whatever is new, peculiar, or important, for good or evil, in our national existence and social state.