obliged to provide for his own wants. No sooner does he enter the world than the idea of necessity assails him on every side: he soon learns to know exactly the natural limit of his authority; he never expects to subdue those who withstand him, by force; and he knows that the surest means of obtaining the support of his fellow-creatures, is to win their favor. He therefore becomes patient, reflecting, tolerant, slow to act, and persevering in his designs.

In the Southern States the more immediate wants of life are always supplied; the inhabitants of those parts are not busied in the material cares of life, which are always provided for by others; and their imagination is diverted to more captivating and less definite objects. The American of the South is fond of grandeur, luxury, and renown, of gaiety, of pleasure, and above all of idleness; nothing obliges him to exert himself in order to subsist; and as he has no necessary occupations, he gives way to indolence, and does not even attempt what would be useful.

But the equality of fortunes, and the absence of slavery in the North, plunge the inhabitants in those same cares of daily life which are disdained by the white population of the South. They are taught from infancy to combat want; and to place comfort above all the pleasures of the intellect or the heart. The imagination is extinguished by the trivial details of life; and the ideas become less numerous and less general, but far more practical and more precise. As pros. perity is the sole aim of exertion, it is excellently well attained; nature and mankind are turned to the best pecuniary advantage; and society is dexterously made to contribute to the welfare of each of its members, while individual egotism is the source of general happi

ness.

The citizen of the North has not only experience, but knowledge: nevertheless he sets but little value upon the pleasures of knowledge; he esteems it as the means of obtaining a certain end, and he is only anxious to seize its more lucrative applications. The citizen of the South is more given to act upon impulse; he is more clever, more frank, more generous, more intellectual, and more brilliant. The former, with a greater degree of activity, of common sense, of informa tion, and of general aptitude, has the characteristic good and evil qualities of the middle classes. The latter has the tastes, the prejudices, the weaknesses, and the magnanimity of all aristocracies.

If two men are united in society, who have the same interests, and to a certain extent the same opinions, but different characters, different acquirements, and a different style of civilization, it is probable that

these men will not agree. The same remark is applicable to a society

of nations.

Slavery, then, does not attack the American Union directly in its interests, but indirectly in its manners.

The States which gave their assent to the Federal Contract in 1790 were thirteen in number; the Union now consists of twenty-four mem. bers. The population which amounted to nearly four millions in 1790, had more than tripled in the space of forty years; and in 1830 it amounted to nearly thirteen millions.✻ Changes of such magnitude cannot take place without some danger.

A society of nations, as well as a society of individuals, derives its principal chances of duration from the wisdom of its members, their individual weakness, and their limited number. The Americans who quit the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean to plunge into the western wilderness, are adventurers impatient of restraint, greedy of wealth, and frequently men expelled from the States in which they were born. When they arrive in the deserts, they are unknown to each other; and they have neither traditions, family feeling, nor the force of example to check their excesses. The empire of the laws is feeble among them; that of morality is still more powerless. The settlers who are constantly peopling the valley of the Mississippi are, then, in every respect very inferior to the Americans who inhabit the older parts of the Union. Nevertheless, they already exercise a great influence in its councils; and they arrive at the government of the com. monwealth before they have learned to govern themselves.†

The greater the individual weakness of each of the contracting parties, the greater are the chances of the duration of the contract; for their safety is then dependent upon their union. When, in 1790, the most populous of the American republics did not contain 500,000 inhabitants, each of them felt its own insignificance as an independent people, and this feeling rendered compliance with the Federal authori. ty more easy. But when one of the confederate States reckons, like the State of New York, two millions of inhabitants, and covers an extent of territory equal in surface to a quarter of France,§ it feels

3,929,328.
12,856,165.

+ This indeed is only a temporary danger. I have no doubt that in time society will assume as much stability and regularity in the West, as it has already done upon the coast of the Atlantic Ocean.

Pennsylvania contained 431,373 inhabitants in 1790.

The area of the State of New York is about 46,000 square miles. See Carey and Lea's American Geography, p. 142.

its own strength; and although it may continue to support the Union as advantageous to its prosperity, it no longer regards that body at necessary to its existence; and, as it continues to belong to the Federal compact, it soon aims at preponderance in the Federal assemblies. The probable unanimity of the States is diminished as their number increases. At present the interests of the different parts of the Union are not at variance; but who is able to foresee the multifarious changes of the future, in a country in which towns are founded from day to day, and States almost from year to year?

Since the first settlement of the British Colonies, the number of inhabitants has about doubled every twenty-two years. I perceive no causes which are likely to check this progressive increase of the Anglo-American population for the next hundred years; and before that space of time has elapsed, I believe that the territories and dependencies of the United States will be covered by more than a hundred millions of inhabitants, and divided into forty States.✻ I admit that these hundred millions of men have no hostile interests; I suppose, on the contrary, that they are all equally interested in the maintenance of the Union; but I am still of opinion, that where there are a hundred millions of men, and forty distinct nations, unequally strong, the continuance of the Federal Government can Only be a fortunate accident.

Whatever faith I may have in the perfectibility of man, until human nature is altered, and men wholly transformed, I shall refuse to believe in the duration of a government which is called upon to hold together forty different peoples, disseminated over a territory equal to one half of Europe in extent; to avoid all rivalry, ambition, and struggles between them; and to direct their independent activity to the accom. plishment of the same designs.

But the greatest peril to which the Union is exposed by its increase,

If the population continues to double every twenty-two years, as it has done for the last two hundred years, the number of inhabitants in the United States in 1852 will be twenty millions: in 1874, forty-eight millions; and in 1896, ninety-six millions. This may still be the case even if the lands on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains should be found to be unfit for cultivation. The territory which is already occupied can easily contain this number of inhabitants. One hundred millions of men disseminated over the surface of the twenty-four States, and the three dependencies, which constitute the Union, would give only 762 inhabitants to the square league; this would be far below the mean population of France, which is 1,063 to the square league; or of England, which is 1,457; and it would even be below the population of Switzerland, for that country, notwithstanding its lakes and mountains, contains 783 inhabitants to the square league. (See Maltebrun, vol. vi. p. 92.)

arises from the continual changes which take place in the position of its internal strength. The distance from Lake Superior to the Gulf of Mexico extends from the 47th to the 30th degree of latitude, a distance of more than twelve hundred miles, as the bird flies. The frontier of the United States winds along the whole of this immense line; sometimes falling within its limits, but more frequently extending far beyond it, into the waste. It has been calculated that the whites advance every year a mean distance of seventeen miles along the whole of this vast boundary.✻ Obstacles, such as an unproductive district, a lake, or an Indian nation unexpectedly encountered, are sometimes met with. The advancing column then halts for a while; its two extremities fall back upon themselves, and as soon as they are re-united they proceed onward. This gradual and continuous progress of the European race towards the Rocky Mountains has the solemnity of a providential event; it is like a deluge of men rising unabatedly, and daily driven onward by the hand of God.

Within this first line of conquering settlers, towns are built, and vast States founded. In 1790 there were only a few thousand pioneers sprinkled along the valleys of the Mississippi; and at the present day these valleys contain as many inhabitants as were to be found in the whole Union in 1790. Their population amounts to nearly four millions. The city of Washington was founded in 1800, in the very centre of the Union; but such are the changes which have taken place, that it now stands at one of the extremities; and the delegates of the most remote Western States are already obliged to perform a journey as long as that from Vienna to Paris.

All the States are borne onward at the same time in the path of fortune, but of course they do not all increase and prosper in the same proportion. In the North of the Union detached branches of the Alleghany chain, extending as far as the Atlantic Ocean, form spacious roads and ports, which are constantly accessible to vessels of the greatest burden. But from the Potomac to the mouth of the Mississippi, the coast is sandy and flat. In this part of the Union the mouths of almost all the rivers are obstructed; and the few harbors which exist among these lagunes, afford much shallower water to vessels, and much fewer commercial advantages than those of the North.

This first natural cause of inferiority is united to another cause pro.

✻ See Legislative Documents, 20th Congress, No. 117, p. 105.

† 3,672,317; Census of 1830.

The distance from Jefferson, the capital of the state of Missouri, to Washington is 1,019 miles. (American Almanac, 1831, p. 48.)

ceeding from the laws. We have already seen that slavery, which is abolished in the North, still exists in the South; and I have pointed out its fatal consequences upon the prosperity of the planter himself.

The North is therefore superior to the South both in commerce✻ and manufacture; the natural consequence of which is the more rapid in, crease of population and of wealth within its borders. The States situate upon the shores of tho Atlantic Ocean are already half-peopled. Most of the land is held by an owner; and these districts cannot there, fore receive so many emigrants as the Western States, where a boundless field is still open to their exertions. The valley of the Mississippi is far more fertile than the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. This reason,

added to all the others, contributes to drive the Europeans westward,— a fact which may be rigorously demonstrated by figures. It is found that the sum total of the population of all the United States has about tripled in the course of forty years. But in the recent States adjacent to the Mississippi, the population has increased thirty-one fold within the same space of time.†

The relative position of the central Federal power is continually displaced. Forty years ago the majority of the citizens of the Union was established upon, the coast of the Atlantic, in the environs of the spot upon which Washington now stands; but the great body of the people is now advancing inland and to the North, so that in twenty

The following statements will suffice to show the difference which exists be tween the commerce of the South and that of the North.

In 1829 the tonnage of all the merchant-vessels belonging to Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia, (the four great Southern States,) amounted to only 5,243 tons. In the same year the tonnage of the vessels of the State of Massachusetts alone amounted to 17,322 tons. (See Legislative Documents, 21st Congress, 2nd Session, No. 140. p. 244.) Thus the State of Massachusetts has three times as much shipping as the four above-mentioned States. Nevertheless the area of the State of Massachusetts is only 7,335 square miles, and its population amounts to 610,014 inhabitants; while the area of the four other States I have quoted is 210,000 square miles, and their population 3,047,767. Thus the area of the State of Massachusetts forms only one thirtieth part of the area of the four States; and its population is fiye times smaller than theirs (See Darby's View of the United States) Slavery is prejudicial to the commercial prosperity of the South in several different ways; by diminishing the spirit of enterprise among the whites, and by preventing them from meeting with as numerous a class of sailors as they require. Sailors are usually taken from the lowest ranks of the population. But in the Southern States these lowest ranks are composed of slaves, and it is very difficult to employ them at sea. They are unable to serve as well as a white crew, and apprehensions would always b entertained of their mutinying in the middle of the ocean, or of their escaping in the foreign countries at which they might touch.

+ Darby's View of the United States, p. 444.