ories. Agricultural pursuits are highly remunerative, and tens of
thousands of men of moderate means, or of no means, are cheered along to
where none forbids them land to till. For the last few years, public
improvements have called for vastly more than the usual share of labor,
and augmented the consumption of provisions. The foreign demand added to
this, has increased their price beyond what the planter can afford to
pay. For many years free labor and slave labor maintained an even race
in their Western progress. Of late the freemen have begun to lag behind,
while slavery has advanced by several degrees of longitude. Free labor
must be made to keep pace with it. There is an urgent necessity for
this. The demand for cotton is increasing in a ratio greater than can be
supplied by the American planters, unless by a corresponding increased
production. This increasing demand must be met, or its cultivation will
be facilitated elsewhere, and the monopoly of the planter in the
European markets be interrupted. This can only be effected by
concentrating the greatest possible number of slaves upon the cotton
plantations. Hence they must be supplied with provisions.

This is the present aspect of the Provision question, as it regards
slavery extension. Prices are approximating the maximum point, beyond
which our provisions can not be fed to slaves, unless there is a
corresponding increase in the price of cotton. Such a result was not
anticipated by Southern statesmen, when they had succeeded in
overthrowing the protective policy, destroying the United States Bank,
and establishing the Sub-Treasury system. And why has this occurred? The
mines of California prevented both the Free-Trade Tariff,[33] and the
Sub-Treasury scheme from exhausting the country of the precious metals,
extinguishing the circulation of Bank Notes, and reducing the prices of
agricultural products to the specie value. At the date of the passage of
the Nebraska Bill, the multiplication of provisions, by their more
extended cultivation, was the only measure left that could produce a
reduction of prices, and meet the wants of the planters. The Canadian
Reciprocity Treaty, since secured, will bring the products of the
British North American colonies, free of duty, into competition with
those of the United States, when prices, with us, rule high, and tend to
diminish their cost; but in the event of scarcity in Europe, or of
foreign wars, the opposite results may oc