ritime port in the universe,
and Cincinnati will not only be the Queen of the West, but Queen of the
Western World. Then will come the real clashing of interests, and the
Eastern States must be content to succumb and resign their present
power, or the Western will throw them off, as an useless appendage to
her might. This may at present appear chimerical to some, and would be
considered by many others as too far distant; but be it remembered, that
ten years in America, is as a century; and even allowing the prosperity
of the United States to be checked, as very probably it may soon be, by
any quarrel with a foreign nation, the Western States will not be those
who will suffer. Far removed from strife, the population hardly
interfered with, when the Eastern resources are draining, they will
continue to advance in population, and to increase in wealth. I refer
not to the Slave States bordering on the Mississippi, although I
consider that they would suffer little from a war, as neither England,
nor any other nation, will ever be so unwise in future as to attack in a
quarter, where she would have extended the olive branch, even if it were
not immediately accepted. Whether America is engaged in war, therefore,
or remains in peace, the Western States must, and will soon be the
arbiters, and dictate as they please to the Eastern.
At present, they may be considered as infants, not yet of age, and the
Eastern States are their guardians; the profits of their produce are
divided between them and the merchants of the Eastern cities, who
receive at least thirty per cent. as their share. This must be the case
at present, when the advances of the Eastern capitalists are required by
the cotton growers, who are precisely in the same position with the
Eastern States, as the West India planters used to be with the merchants
of London and Liverpool, to whom they consigned their cargoes for
advances received. But the Western States (to follow up the metaphor)
will soon be of age, and no longer under control: even last year,
vessels were freighted direct from England to Vicksburg, on the
Mississippi; in a few years, there will be large importing houses in the
Far West, who will have their goods direct from England at one half the
price which they now pay for them, when forwarded from New York, by
canal, and other conveyances. [See Note 4.] Indeed, a very little
inquiry will prove, that the prosperity of the Eastern free States
depend
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