settlements on the south; its territory is more extensive, its soil more fertile, and its inhabitants more numerous; it is situated on the Ohio, navigable at almost all seasons: this last advantage is equally enjoyed by the two settlements of which I am going to speak. The establishment at Muskingum was formed in 1788, by a number of emigrants from New England, belonging to the Ohio Company. The Muskingum is a river which falls into the Ohio from the west. These people have an excellent soil, and every prospect of success.

From these proprietors is formed another association, whose name is more known in France; it is that of the Scioto Company,* a name taken from a river which, after having traversed the two millions of acres which they possess, falls into the Ohio.

This settlement would soon rise to a high degree of prosperity if the proper cautions were taken in the embarkation and the necessary means employed to solace them, and to prepare them for a kind of life so different from that to which they are accustomed.

The revolution in the American government will, doubtless, be beneficial to the savages; for the government tends essentially to peace. But, as a rapid increase of population must necessarily be the consequence of its operations, the savages must either blend with the Americans, or a thousand causes will speedily annihilate that race of men.

There is nothing to fear, that the danger from the savages will ever arrest the ardor of the Americans for extending their settlements. They all expect that the navigation of the Mississippi becoming free will soon open to them the markets of the islands and the Spanish colonies for the productions with which their country overflows. But the question to be solved is, whether the Spaniards will open this navigation willingly or whether the Americans will force it. A kind of negotiation has been carried on, without effect, for four years; and it is supposed that certain States, fearing to lose their inhabitants by emigration to the west, have, in concert with the Spanish minister, opposed it; and that this concert gave rise to a proposition that Spain should shut up the navigation for twenty-five years, on condition that the Americans should have a free commerce with Spain. Virginia and Maryland, though they had more to fear from this emigration than the other States, were opposed to this proposition as derogatory to the honor of the United States; and a majority of Congress adopted the sentiment.

A degree of diffidence, which the inhabitants of the west have shewn relative to the secret designs of Congress, has induced many people to believe that the union would not exist a long time between the old and new States; and this probability of a rupture, they say,

The writer in a note here defends the Scioto Company from certain criticism and commends its lands to the poor of Europe contemplating emigration.- Editor.

is strengthened by some endeavors of the English in Canada to attach the western settlers to the English government.

But a number of reasons determine me to believe that the present union will forever subsist. A great part of the property of the western land belongs to people of the east; the unceasing emigrations serve perpetually to strengthen their connections; and as it is for the interest both of the east and west to open an extensive commerce with South America, and to overleap the Mississippi, they must, and will, remain united for the accomplishment of this object.

The western inhabitants are convinced that this navigation cannot remain a long time closed. They are determined to open it by good will or by force; and it would not be in the power of Congress to moderate their ardor. Men who have shook off the yoke. of Great Britain, and who are masters of the Ohio and the Mississippi, cannot conceive that the insolence of a handful of Spaniards can think of shutting rivers and seas against a hundred thousand free Americans. The slightest quarrel will be sufficient to throw them into a flame; and if ever the Americans shall march towards New Orleans it will infallibly fall into their hands. The Spaniards fear this moment; and it cannot be far off. If they had the policy to open the Mississippi, the port of New Orleans would become the centre of a lucrative commerce. But her narrow and superstitious policy will oppose it; for she fears, above all things, the communication of those principles of independence which the Americans preach wherever they go, and to which their own success gives an additional weight.

In order to avert the effects of this enterprising character of the free Americans, the Spanish government has adopted the pitiful project of attracting them to a settlement on the west of the Mississippi, and by granting to those who shall establish themselves there the exclusive right of trading to New Orleans. This colony is the first foundation of the conquest of Louisiana, and of the civilization of Mexico and Peru.

How desirable it is for the happiness of the human race that this communication should extend! for cultivation and population here will augment the prosperity of the manufacturing nations of Europe. The French and Spaniards, settled at the Natches, on the most fertile soil, have not for a century cultivated a single acre; while the Americans, who have lately made a settlement there, have at present three thousand farms of four hundred acres each, which furnish the greater part of the provisions for New Orleans. O Liberty, how great is thy empire! thou createst industry, which vivifies the dead.

I transport myself sometimes in imagination to the succeeding century. I see this whole extent of continent, from Canada to Quito,

* Colonel Morgan is at the head of this settlement.

covered with cultivated fields, little villages, and country houses.* see Happiness and Industry smiling side by side, Beauty adorning the daughter of Nature, Liberty and Morals rendering almost useless the coercion of Government and Laws, and gentle Tolerance taking place of the ferocious Inquisition. I see Mexicans, Peruvians, men of the United States, Frenchmen, and Canadians embracing each other, cursing tyrants, and blessing the reign of Liberty, which leads to universal harmony. But the mines, the slaves, what is to become of them? The mines will be closed, and the slaves will become the brothers of their masters. As to gold, it is degrading to a free country to dig for it, unless it can be done without slaves; and a free people cannot want for signs to serve as a medium in exchanging their commodities. Gold has always served more the cause of despotism than that of liberty; and liberty will always find less dangerous. agents to serve in its place.

Our speculators in Europe are far from imagining that two revolutions are preparing on this continent, which will totally overturn the ideas and the commerce of the old: the opening a canal of communication between the two oceans, and abandoning the mines of Peru. Let the imagination of the philosopher contemplate the consequences. They cannot but be happy for the human race.

In studying the general condition of the United States at the period of the beginning of our independent national life, we find much interesting and illuminating material in the books of foreign travellers, visitors from England and elsewhere. References to many such works, written just before or after the close of the Revolution, will be found in the "Narrative and Critical History of America," viii. 489-491. The accounts of books of travel in the "Literature of American History," edited by J. N. Larned for the American Library Association, should also be consulted. See, too, H. T. Tuckerman's "America and her Commentators." Among such records of American experience and observation are several by intelligent Frenchmen, the most important of which is the well-known work by Brissot, of which two chapters are given in the present leaflet. A few years earlier came the works of Crévecœur and the Marquis de Chastellux.

Jean Pierre Brissot was born near Chartres in 1754, and educated for the bar. He was an eager student of history and politics, earned a literary reputation while still very young, spent much time in England, and had important journalistic experience in London as well as in Paris. He became a republican, and took prominent part in the early movements of the French Revolution. He was deeply interested in our own Revolution, defended us from various hostile critics, and came over here in 1788 to study our social and political conditions, writing his book for the purpose of commending our republican experiment to the French people. His general estimate may be inferred from the following passage from his preface: "O Frenchmen, who wish for this valuable instruction, study the Americans of the present day. Open this book. You will here see to what degree of prosperity the blessings of freedom can elevate the industry of man; how they dignify his nature, and dispose him to universal fraternity. You will here learn by what means liberty is preserved; that the great secret of its duration is in good morals. It is a truth that the observation of the present

America will never have enormous cities, like London and Paris, which would absorb the means of industry and vitiate morals. Hence it will result that property will be more equally divided, population greater, manners less corrupted, and industry and happiness more universal.

state of America demonstrates at every step. Thus you will see, in these Travels, the prodigious effects of liberty on morals, on industry and on the amelioration of men. You will see those stern Presbyterians, who, on the first settlement of their country, infected with the gloomy superstitions of Europe, could erect gibbets for those who thought differently from themselves, you will see them admitting all sects to equal charity and brotherhood, rejecting those superstitions which, to adore the Supreme Being, make martyrs of part of the human race. Thus you will see all the Americans, in whose minds the jealousy of the mother country had disseminated the most absurd prejudices against foreign nations, abjure those prejudices, reject every idea of war, and open the way to a universal confederation of the human race. You will see independent America contemplating no other limits but those of the universe, no other restraint but the laws made by her representatives. You will see them attempting all sorts of speculations; opening the fertile bosom of the soil, lately covered by forests; tracing unknown seas; establishing new communications, new markets; naturalizing, in their own country, those precious manufactures which England had reserved to herself; and by this accumulation of the means of industry they change the balance that was formerly against America, and turn it to their own advantage. You will see them faithful to their engagements, while their enemies are proclaiming their bankruptcy. You will see them invigorating their minds, and cultivating their virtues; reforming their government, employing only the language of reason to convince the refractory; multiplying everywhere moral institutions and patriotic establishments; and, above all, never separating the idea of public from private virtues. Such is the consoling picture which these Travels will offer to the friend of liberty."

The time of Brissot's visit was just after the Constitutional Convention and while the ratification of the new Constitution was before the different States. Massachusetts had ratified it just before his arrival in Boston. Boston is the first place which he describes. His whole chapter on Boston is here given, as one of the most interesting and representative in the book. He went as far north as Newburyport and Portsmouth, travelled through Massachusetts to Springfield, greatly enjoying the agricultural life and the little villages, visited the principal places in Rhode Island and Connecticut, and spent considerable time in New York and Philadelphia, to which latter place especially he devotes much space. He met Madison, Hamilton, and Jay in New York. He devotes an enthusiastic chapter to his visit to Franklin. He spent three days at Mt. Vernon with Washington, to whom Lafayette had given him an introduction. He writes about the Quakers, who especially appealed to him, about slavery and the condition of the negroes, about prisons, hospitals, education, trade, and agriculture. He talked with men who had been to the Ohio country; and his closing chapter in the volume devoted to his travels, upon the Western Territory, given in the present leaflet, in which he speculates concerning the future great western expansion of the republic, is one of the most interesting in the book

Brissot's work was published in Paris in 1791. The first English edition was published in London in 1792; the second, revised, in 1794. The first American edition was published in Boston in 1797. This was four years after Brissot s death. The years after his return to Paris from America had been crowded with political activities, accounts of which may be found in the various histories of the French Revolution. With twenty other Girondists, he suffered death under the guillotine, October 30, 1793. A full account of his various writings may be found in the second volume of the 1794 edition of his "Travels in the United States."

The Committee appointed to prepare a plan for the temporary Government of the Western territory have agreed to the following resolutions:

Resolved that the territory ceded or to be ceded by Individual States to the United States whensoever the same shall have been purchased of the Indian Inhabitants & offered for sale by the U.S. shall be formed into distinct States bounded in the following manner as nearly as such cessions will admit, that is to say; Northwardly & Southwardly by parallels of latitude so that each state shall comprehend from South to North two degrees of latitude beginning to count from the completion of thirty-one degrees North of the equator, but any territory Northwardly of the 47th degree shall make part of the statenext below, and Eastwardly & Westwardly they shall be bounded, those on the Mississippi by that river on one side and the meridian of the lowest point of the rapids of Ohio on the other; and those adjoining on the East by the same meridian on their Western side, and on their eastern by the meridian of the Western cape of the mouth of the Great Kanhaway. And the territory eastward of this last meridian

Endorsed: "Report of Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Chase, Mr. Howell. Temporary Governmt of Western County Delivered March 1784. Entd-Read.- March 3. Monday next assigned for the consideration of this report. March 17. 1784. recommitted." This report is entirely in Jefferson's handwriting.