try, quadrupled the produce of
our lands, and extended a green mantle over districts which once wore the
appearance of barren wastes; but the consumption of our manufactures
abroad has not risen in the same proportion. It behoves us, then, to
explore and secure new markets, which can best be done by connecting
ourselves with those regions to which the isthmus of Panama is the
readiest avenue. In a mercantile point of view, the importance of the
western coasts of America is only partially known to us. With the
exception of Valparaiso and Lima, our merchants seldom visit the various
ports along that extended line, to which the establishment of the Hudson's
Bay Company on the Columbia river gives a new feature. Although abounding
in the elements of wealth, in many of these secluded regions the spark of
commercial life has scarcely been awakened by foreign intercourse. Our
whale-fisheries in the Pacific may also require more protection than they
have hitherto done; and if we ever hope to have it in our power to obtain
live alpacas from Peru as a new stock in this country, and at a rate cheap
enough for the farmer to purchase and naturalize them, it must be by the
way of Panama, by which route guano manure may also be brought over to us
at one half of the present charges. We are now sending bonedust and other
artificial composts to Jamaica and our other islands in the West Indies,
in order to restore the soil, impoverished by successive sugar-cane crops,
while the most valuable fertilizer, providentially provided on the other
side of the isthmus, remains entirely neglected.

The establishment of a more direct intercourse with the Pacific, it will
therefore readily be acknowledged, is an undertaking worthy of a great
nation, and conformable to the spirit of the age in which we are
living--an undertaking which would do more honour to Great Britain, and
ultimately prove more beneficial to our merchants, than any other that
possibly could be devised. Nor is it to be imagined that other nations are
insensible to the advantages which they would derive from an opening of
this kind. The feelings and sentiments of the French upon this subject
have already been briefly noticed. The King of Holland has expressed
himself favourable to the undertaking, nor are the Belgians behind hand in
their good wishes for its accomplishment. If possible, the North Americans
have a larger and more immediate interest in its success than the
commercial n