mote Pacific, on the sugar-planter of Louisiana, the iron and glass manufacturer of Pittsburgh, and on every factory and shoemaker's shop in the Atlantic States. Strike out at once the consumption of this one new State, and would it not produce a nervous sensation throughout the trade of the land? The growth of a new State conduces no less to the prosperity of eastern cities than of their own towns. Lowell and Lynn are thriving as lustily as Detroit or Buffalo from the trade of Michigan. These are practical views, well worth the notice of legislators who would compel every locality to take care of itself. Several peculiarities should be noted in the appreciation of the com. merce of a new State. In old countries, where land has approached its maximum value, where population is so dense that pauperism hangs an eternal incubus on the national energies, there, a small per centage only of the gross earnings is saved, and added to accumulated national wealth. Indeed, oftentimes, after the lapse of many a census, a nation finds itself receding in wealth. At the same time most of the external evidences of comfort and prosperity greet the eye. In a new country the whole matter is reversed. The country in its early progress plunges deeply in debt, and if distressed by a succession of bad seasons, almost bankrupt, as far as payment of obligations is concerned. But each year the single farm and the aggregate territory is enhanced in value. Oftentimes, where the farmer's whole production would hardly support him, the steady swing of his axe has constantly enhanced the value of his homestead, and a rapid increase in the value of his possessions goes on, while disease, discomfort, and pecuniary embarrassment stare him in the face. Hence the magical transformation of the superficies of a new State, and a real creation of national wealth in the face of distressing obstacles that would be entirely fatal to the progress of older communities. Again, the prosperity of a new State cannot be measured by a comparison of imports and exports for any single year. The greater the accre. tions of population, the more grasping their enterprise, the greater their wants. By the necessity of the case, a poor emigrant must import and live this year, and export and pay the next. It is a general truth, admit. ting of but rare exceptions, that a new country is always one year in debt. If the exports of a new State are two millions less than the imports for 1848, still, if the exports of 1849 shall balance the imports of the previous year, the expectations of the people are realized, the country is in a thrifty condition, and their aggregate debt at any moment sinks to insignificance compared with the vast improvements that have grap. pled their roots over the land, or the fleets which float upon the surface of the waters. How extensive the commerce of Michigan will become must depend on the population of contiguous States. Should the whole of the northwestern States increase for fifty years according to the most prudent cal. culations, and Michigan keep pace with the rest, it will be the trade of her two millions with ten millions of neighbors. On her an immense population will entirely depend for copper. Of her they will demand vast quantities of lumber and iron. On her fisheries there will be an eternal demand. How great the trade in salt and plaster may become, remains a problem. It has been supposed that the upper peninsula must be inaccessible. But the isthmus between Little Bay de Noquet, the northern extremity of Green Bay, can be crossed to the waters of Lake Superior, at one place, by a railroad span of thirty-five miles, and other eligible places by a railroad of 50 to 70 miles in length; and the fine fisheries and copper regions of Lake Superior can be connected with the iron regions of the southern side of the upper peninsula, and all the accumulations of the fisheries and the copper and iron trade brought within two days' transportation of Chicago, and thus connected with the regions of abundant and cheap breadstuffs, even with the tropi cal regions. The sugar-planter of Louisiana, and the miner of Lake Superior, can exchange productions in less time, and at far cheaper cost, than could the settler of Oneida county with the city of New York thirty years ago. When the quarrel existed between Michigan and Ohio relative to the ten mile strip on the southern border of Michigan, resulting in the memorable Toledo war, and it pleased the politicians at Washington, irrespective of the justice of the case, to side with Ohio, and to give to Michigan the upper peninsula as a sop, the people of Michigan almost spurned the concession, intended as a bribe. They little dreamed of its incalculable value. Even the trade between the upper and lower peninsula must be large in itself, and constantly increase. Vast numbers must be engaged in lumbering, fishing, mining, and manufacturing the crude materials; other thousands must be exclusively engaged in transporting; and all these fishermen, miners, manufacturers and transporters must be fed, and fed principally by the farmers at no remote distance. Thus at home will exist the best of all markets for agriculture; and so far as this consumption goes, no sacrifice of 40 or 50 cents per bushel need be made on wheat to get it to market and to the mouth of the consumer. It is proper to remark, that the agricultural capacities of the upper peninsula are fully equal to New England, and its climate equal, if not superior; that the vallies of the rivers afford the best of land, and some portions abound in the finest description of timber. The unsettled part also of the lower peninsula is, in the main, good land. Cast your eye over the map of Michigan, and it will be perceived that no spot of its territory is ninety miles from one of the great lakes. As intimated before, the lower peninsula will soon be crossed by the Michi gan Central Railroad. The corporation is erecting one of the most ca. pacious depots in the United States at Detroit. The structure of the road is to be of the most permanent character. Its rates of transportation are to be reasonable or low, and it will afford the most rapid ingress and egress at the cheapest rates. The Michigan Southern Railroad, the Pontiac Railroad, and the Erie and Kalamazoo Railroad, penetrate the State already. If the reader will take the map, and starting from Monroe, at the south-east corner of Michigan, trace the shores of the lower peninsula around by the Straits of Mackinac to New Buffalo, and then, transporting himself to the mouth of the Menominie River, on Green Bay, trace again the shores of the upper peninsula by the same Straits of Mackinac and the Straits of St. Marie to the mouth of the Montreal river, he will have followed a maritime coast of two thousand miles-a coast nearly as long as the Atlantic shore of the old thirteen States, all within the limits of a single State, which stretches itself along the tortuous course of our great American Baltic. Along this whole coast he will find that rivers occasionally débouché, the mouths of which are capable of being made good harbors. From the mouth of the St. Joseph River to Mackinac, on Lake Michigan, a distance of more than five hundred miles, there is but a single harbor for refuge or shelter. Yet in all the great gales of the spring and fall, of whose frightful ravages we have periodical details, this is a lee shore to the navigation of the lakes. The navigation of all the lakes in 1847, as appears from a well-digested article in the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser, consisted of Steamers.... Tons. Propellers..... Barques.. Brigs.. Schooners... Sloops and scows.. Total........... To which add estimate of those building....... Number. 103 36,506 Its value must be some seven millions of dollars, while some seven thousand sailors must be employed. Yet two-thirds of all this property and these lives are annually exposed to a lee shore of 500 miles on a single reach of coast, as inhospitable and pitiless, nearly as bare of protec tions or beacons, as when the little steamboat Walk-in-the-Water and a few crazy schooners represented the whole lake navigation. The writer of this article, supposing it possible that it might be an iron coast, and perfectly inaccessible, procured from the proper offices diagrams of the mouths of the rivers and inlets along the western coast of Michigan. They lie at convenient distances. The mouths of several widen into lakes; and, to use the words of an intelligent gentleman, harbors could be made at a slight expense, of capacity enough "to shelter the navies of Great Britain." A single shallop could now hardly find refuge. All these harbors are shut up by bars and obstructions which could be opened and cleared by very moderate appropriations. In answer to inquiries relative to the mouth of the Galien River at New Buffalo, before its im provement was commenced by the Michigan Central Railroad Company, a gentleman wrote as follows:-"We have no commerce, because we have no harbor." This is the whole matter-"the Iliad in a nutshell." This neglect is not only criminal on the part of the government, but it is suicidal. "It is worse than a crime-it is a blunder." Vast quantities of government land are excluded from market, unsaleable and unoccupied, because not rendered accessible. While it is the constitutional duty of the government" to promote the common defence and general welfare," and "regulate commerce among the States," and while the Constitution dots light-houses so thickly along the Atlantic shores that a dozen can be seen from some single positions, yet there are men and legislators and cabinets so mole-eyed, that they recognize no right nor duty to enhance the value of a vast public domain, nor to save the shores of these lakes from being annually strewed with the wrecks of our inland fleets, and the dead bodies of our fellow-citizens. There has been a silly doctrine propagated, that a river running through two States is a fit subject for national expenditure, while a river entirely within a single State is not. Let us apply this doctrine to Michigan. The river St. Joseph runs through two States, Michigan and Indiana, yet its commerce is entirely local, belonging exclusively to half a dozen counties. At the same time the flats of the St. Clair, if improved, must be improved within the bounds of the single State of Michigan. They are daily crossed by a navigation national in its character and importance. The formidable obstacle these flats present will be best understood from the fact that twenty vessels are often delayed at a time, that a material difference is made in the cost of freight from the upper lakes by their existence, and that owners and ship-builders are obliged to construct their vessels with reference to this nuisance. A practical business man, living near the spot, estimates the loss and expenses annually accruing as follows:Three steamers for towing, &c., seven months in the year, at $75 per day Four lighters, at $15 per day......... Detention of eight brigs and schooners at $30 per day each.... 66 one upper lake steamer, at $150 per day continually...... Loss of time of 300 passengers at $1 per day....... Total............ $47,250 12,600 46,400 21,500 43,000 $170,750 Suppose this an over estimate, and suppose the expense $100,000 only, such is the tribute paid by the farmer and mariner, emigrant and consumer of the northern States of the Union. At the Chicago Convention, one of the speakers excluded this obstruction from the purview of the Constitution because lying within a single State-though the energies of the whole west were cramped and paralyzed, and merchants and mariners alike the victims of every storm. The same speaker, soaring in imagination, stretched the flights of his eagles, and unfolded our banner from Labrador to Panama. While his imagination was revelling in the acquisition of vast territories, he did not seem to remember that he could not find a sin gle sentence, a single word, a single letter in the Constitution that sanctioned the acquisition of a foot of new soil. The Constitution could grasp new territories, but could not protect or foster them. The Constitution could seize new empires without a power, but could not save the life of a citizen in the exercise of expressly granted powers. In such unfortunate positions do politicians sometimes place themselves, who now stretch and now narrow the Constitution; now amplify and now blot out its provisions to suit their caprices and theories, or interested purposes. Language cannot express the stupidity and blindness with which the whole of the public interests have been treated on Lake Superior. Before treating of this subject, it may be well to exhibit the navigation of that lake, as it is to show how utterly inadequate it is to perform the duties required. The following are the names and tonnage of vessels in employment on Lake Superior during the summer of 1847 : Steam-packet Julia Palmer........tons 300 | Schooner Siskawit...................tons Propeller Independence... Schooner Napoleon...... 40 261 66 Swallow.... 88 The following vessels have been hauled around the falls at the respective dates: 66 46 65 66 Swallow.......... 88 Uncle Tom...... 115 66 1847 Schooner Rob. Ried....... 12 66 The following list of vessels lost, or that have run the Sault, taken in connection with the foregoing tables, will give an exhibit of the whole navigation of Lake Superior to this time. For this detail, and much valuable information relative to Lake Superior, the reader is indebted to the late lamented Col. Wm. F. P. Taylor, of Buffalo : These details are given particularly to show how pitiful is the commerce, and how cruelly severed are the people of the rest of the northern States from the richest mines and finest fisheries in the world. The President, by the law of 1847, which throws the mineral lands into market at four times the value of farming lands, is enjoined to give a brief description of the facilities for transporting the products to a market. He might, in his next advertisement of sales, add an N. B. to this effect ::-"Half a million of dollars' worth of ore lies exhumed on Lake Superior because the miners must haul their vessels over a portage of nearly a mile in length.' In 1839, when the authorities of the State of Michigan attempted to break ground for a canal for which appropriations had been made, the workmen were driven off by the United States soldiery, Despairing of ever obtaining an appropriation from the general government, the Legislature of Michigan, during the past winter, have passed a law incorporating a private company with adequate powers for the construction of a canal. Fortunately, the rights of the government to purchase at any future time are reserved. But is this strait to be an eternal Categat, where all passers are to pay tribute? The most singular fact, in connection with the navigation of this mag. nificent basin, is, that it is navigated almost exclusively by the guidance of a chart prepared by Lieut. Bayfield, R. N., in prosecution of the British admiralty surveys. It would probably be as wise and statesmanlike to call home the expedition sent to Asia to survey the Dead Sea, and order it upon similar long-neglected duties on our own great unknown but living It would probably be full as much within the purview of the strict and conscientious construction of the Constitution, in which our present Ex sea. |