surplus provisions, not
exported, go to the villages, towns, and cities, to feed the mechanics,
manufacturers, merchants, professional men, and others; or to the cotton
and sugar districts of the South, to feed the planters and their slaves.
The increase of mechanics and manufacturers at the North, and the
expansion of slavery at the South, therefore, augment the markets for
provisions, and promote the prosperity of the farmer. As the mechanical
population increases, the implements of industry and articles of
furniture are multiplied, so that both farmer and planter can be
supplied with them on easier terms. As foreign nations open their
markets to cotton fabrics, increased demands for the raw material are
made. As new grazing and grain-growing States are developed, and teem
with their surplus productions, the mechanic is benefited, and the
planter, relieved from food-raising, can employ his slaves more
extensively upon cotton. It is thus that our exports are increased; our
foreign commerce advanced; the home markets of the mechanic and farmer
extended, and the wealth of the nation promoted. It is thus, also, that
the free labor of the country finds remunerating markets for its
products--though at the expense of serving as an efficient auxiliary in
the extension of slavery!

But more: So speedily are new grain-growing States springing up; so
vast is the territory owned by the United States, ready for settlement;
and so enormous will soon be the amount of products demanding profitable
markets, that the national government has been seeking new outlets for
them, upon our own continent, to which, alone, they can be
advantageously transported. That such outlets, when our vast possessions
Westward are brought under cultivation, will be an imperious necessity,
is known to every statesman. The farmers of these new States, after the
example of those of the older sections of the country, will demand a
market for their products. This can be furnished, only, by the extension
of slavery; by the acquisition of more tropical territory; by opening
the ports of Brazil, and other South American countries, to the
admission of our provisions; by their free importation into European
countries; or by a vast enlargement of domestic manufactures, to the
exclusion of foreign goods from the country. Look at this question as it
now stands, and then judge of what it must be twenty years hence. The
class of products under consideration, in the whol