Each and every man that emigrates, ceases at once to be a producer of any thing that can be eaten, worn, or used, while he continues to eat, drink and wear things that are produced by others. Each man that emigrates takes with him some amount of capital that has heretofore been employed in the production of things to be eaten, worn, or used, but from the time of its withdrawal it ceases to produce any thing, its owner applying it to the purchase of commodities required for the use of himself and his family while engaged in the preparation of the new machine that is to take the place of the one he has heretofore used, whether mill, furnace, mine, or farm.

With each and every person that emigrates there is increased difficulty in finding employment by those who are left behind. The closing of the mines compels the miners to emigrate, and thus diminishes the market of the neighbouring farmer for those bulky products of the earth which pay him best, but will not bear transportation to distant markets. It also closes up the demand for the spare labour of himself, his sons, his horses and wagons, and his timber, and thus compels the separation of the members of the family from each other, diminishing the power to clear and cultivate his farm, and ultimately to divide it into smaller portions, each one of which could, and would be made to produce more than is now produced by the whole.

Whatever, then, may be the ultimate result of an increase of emigration, the immediate effect is, necessarily, a diminished amount of production by both labour and capital, and that diminution cannot be estimated at less than five hundred dollars per head for each man, married or single, and it would be safe to place it higher. The emigration of the past year has been very large, but having now offered a bounty upon its increase, we may safely estimate that that of the present and future year will be much larger, and if we take the addition at only twenty thousand per annum, the diminished production of commodities in consequence of this law, in this and the next year, will be twenty millions of dollars.

It is now proposed to grant to every head of a family in the Union a quarter section of land, as a farther bounty on emigration, and "as madness rules the hour," it is probable that such a law will pass, the consequence of which will be a vast further increase of emigration, and, consequently an enormous diminution in the value of all landed property in the already settled states, from the Mississippi to the Atlantic.

The perfect form of society is that in which the centrifugal and centripetal forces balance each other perfectly, and whenever either of these forces obtain the mastery, the inevitable effect is impoverishment, weakness, and ruin. The policy of England has been to increase the centripetal force within herself, and the consequence has been to increase the centrifugal one in all connected with her, impoverishing and destroying both herself and them. Ireland is

likely to become almost depopulated. Much of Scotland* is al-ready so, and the great object of desire in England is now the expulsion of population.

The policy of 1846 is centrifugal in its tendency. It looks to sending from the land all the products of the land, which is thereby exhausted. It looks to depriving the owner of the land of his market for its most profitable products, the potatoes, the turnips, the hay and straw, the veal and milk, and other commodities that will not bear transportation. It looks to confining him to the single pursuit of agriculture, and thus depriving him of a market for all the labour of himself and his family, his horses and his wagons, not needed on his farm. It looks to compelling the owner to emigrate after having exhausted his land. It looks to continuing the occupation of the land in large and unprofitable farms, instead of dividing it into small and profitable ones.

Including California, it has probably already compelled the transfer of not less than half a million of men from the older states to the newer ones-from places at which they were engaged in producing commodities that could be used in satisfaction of their necessities, food, fuel, cloth, and iron, to other places in which they are engaged in the creation of new machinery, requiring all the time to be fed, and clothed, and lodged, and that, too, at a cost that is terrific. The California emigrant eats the food of Chili, and sleeps in a house built of the lumber produced in New York or Maine, or perhaps Wisconsin. The emigrant to Santa Fe eats pork that costs for its transportation no less than thirty-two dollars per barrel, and he who goes to Paso del Norte eats that which has cost for its simple transportation no less than forty-eight dollars,t while his flour costs him about forty dollars. The half million of men thus scattered over the earth, aided by the capital that has been employed in placing them where they are, and maintaining them, were capable of producing food, clothing, iron, fuel and other commodities, to the extent of at least five hundred dollars each, making an aggregate of not less than two hundred and fifty millions of dollars in a single year; whereas, all the return as yet received from them will not pay for one half of the commodities furnished for their support by others, so that the whole of this vast sum con

"It is becoming clear that nothing can relieve the poverty of the Highlanders but the property of the Highlands. The people must be fed, in spite of mortgaged estales and laws of entail, and all other burdens whatsoever. The land must be free, that the people who till it may live. The Highlands require an Encumbered Estates Commission to cut the Gordian knot. Five years of famine in the Highlands have failed to clear off the wretched population. It now remains to be seen whether the land cannot be made to afford them some support."

These are the government contract prices. How enormous is the cost of transporting and sustaining men in the remote districts to which they are now being driven, may be judged by the following comparative view of the charges from the Quarter Master's Department in the four new departments of Oregon, California, New Mexico, and Texas, as compared with the rest of the Union:

New departments, $4,225,752.

Old departments, $530,247.

stitutes a deduction from the present power of the nation to produce commodities in which to trade, or with which to pay for those that we desire to purchase from other nations, and hence it is that we have now so little to export, and are running so heavily in debt.

Emigration produces a necessity for roads. The blocking up of capital from all employment in the construction or carrying on of mills, furnaces, or mines, causes capital to accumulate and enables speculators to obtain means for making roads. Each successive day brings with it advices of the closing of a mill, a furnace or a mine, and therewith come also advices of the increased abundance of money, or unemployed capital, for which there now exists no outlet whatever, except in road-making. Road-makers, however, produce nothing that can be eaten, drunken or worn, and yet they must eat, drink, and wear, and those at whose command the roads are made must supply the food, the clothing, and the lodging, which constitute the wages of the men by whom they are made.

The railroads now in progress of construction throughout the country amount to many thousands of miles-probably six or eight thousand.* The tables of almost every legislative body in the Union, at the coming sessions, will be covered with applications for new ones, while charters for plank-road companies will be asked for by hundreds. Every state, city, and town, and almost every town and township, is now ready to use its influence or lend its credit for obtaining the means of feeding, clothing and lodging the people who are needed to secure that which has become the one great and absorbing object-a good road to market—and bonds of every kind are forthcoming, to be used in the purchase of the necessary iron. The aid of Congress, too, is invoked, and it listens readily to the application. The last session witnessed the granting of a large bounty on the making of a road from Illinois to Mobile. The present one is likely to witness the passage of laws granting similar bounties for numerous other roads in the South and West, including a large one with which to commence the great road from the Missouri to the Pacific. Rivers and harbors are to be improved at a cost of some millions. The older states, too, are asking for a share in this new and grand distribution of lottery prizes. Pennsylvania has already claimed some millions of acres, and other States are following her example. If, now, we add all those things together, it can scarcely be doubted, that in their various forms they present an aggregate equivalent to not less than fifteen thousand miles of railroad, which, at an average cost of $18,000 per mile, would be equal to two hundred and seventy millions of dollars, every farthing of which must consist of labor diverted from the production of things that might be consumed at home, or exchanged for things abroad, and applied to the making of machines upon

* Those of Ohio and Indiana alone amount to nearly two thousand.

which things are to be carried, and which can neither be consumed at home nor exchanged abroad.

This, however, is not all. Congress is besieged with other applications. One desires the fitting out of the Pennsylvania, at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars, as a national contribution to the new British show-shop, the object of which is to induce the people of the world to come to England and spend their time and money. Another claims an appropriation for a line of steamers to Antwerp or Havre. A third would have lines from Philadelphia or Baltimore to Liverpool. A fourth desires a few millions for a line to carry the emancipated slaves of America to the coast of Africa, and to bring the Irish slaves of Britain to America, and that too at a time when the inducements to immigration are rapidly disappearing. A fifth would have a line of steamers from San Francisco to China. Tehuantepec and the Isthmus, and the Nicaragua Canal come in for their respective shares of attention, and the claims of each and every of them are pressed upon the national attention as being indispensable to the extension of trade, when with each step in that direction, there is a diminution in the production of things in which to trade. The less cotton we raise, the greater is held to be the necessity for roads. The less food and tobacco we export, the greater is thought to be the need for ships. The less foreign merchandise we are able to pay for, the more, as it seems to be thought, is the duty of providing steamers by which to bring it.

Another set of speculators has Canada in charge. That country is poor and her lands are of little value, while those of the Union close to the line are valuable. The one has no market for her products, while the other has. Canada desires to raise the price of her land and labour to a level with those of the Union. She has friends within the Union who are willing to depress ours to a level with hers, by the passage of an act permitting the Canadians to sell their food and their wool within the Union and to buy their cloth and their iron out of it, thus granting them all the rights of citizens, while imposing upon them the performance of none of the duties of citizenship. The passage of this act will largely promote the transfer of labour and capital to Canada, and largely diminish the productive power of the Union, and in return for this sacrifice we are offered a new road to market, the St. Lawrence, the use of which its present possessors are now rapidly abandoning. Diminution of production and diminution of the value of land and labour are, however held as nothing when compared with obtaining more roads by which to carry to market that diminished product. It is madness only to be paralleled by that of England in 1846, and "Each, where madness rules the hour,

Would prove his own expressive power"—

by endeavoring to satisfy his hearers in and out of Congress, that

it matters little the closing of furnaces and mines, or the abandonment of farms and plantations, provided only, that roads and steamers be provided in sufficient number.

If we now take the quantity of labour withdrawn from production at home to the creation of new farms, plantations, and states, in the West, and likely to be further withdrawn as the bounty land system comes further into operation-the quantity withdrawn and likely to be withdrawn for the creation of this immense system of roads the number of persons now thrown absolutely idle in consequence of the closing of mines, furnaces and mills,-the dimin+ ished production among farmers consequent upon the withdrawal of a demand for the more bulky products of the farm-the diminution consequent upon the annihilation of the productive power of seventy, or eighty, if not a hundred millions of dollars invested in mills, mines, and furnaces,-and the further diminution consequent upon the transfer of capital and labour to Canada, Mexico, the Isthmus of Panama, Nicaragua-it would seem impossible to doubt that there must be in the next and following years a diminution in the power to produce commodities for consumption or exchange, to the amount of a thousand millions of dollars, or five hundred millions of dollars per annum, being one-sixth of the total production, estimated by Mr. Walker three years since, and perhaps one-fourth of the true amount of production, which does not probably exceed two thousand millions of dollars.

How is this diminished production to become obvious? already have little food to sell, and every transfer of labour from the production of food to the creation of new machinery, must lessen the quantity. If all these are to go on, the supply of food. must be greatly diminished, and instead of exporting, as now, more than twenty millions of it, the probability is that we shall see the exports diminished to some eight or ten millions, while we shall import largely, as we did in 1836, and as Great Britain did in 1846. Prices will then be high, and with every increase there then will be diminished power on the part of the labourer to obtain food, with still rapid diminution in the power to purchase either cloth or iron. The farmers will temporarily profit in the price of food, as they did in 1846, but the ultimate result must be the same. They will lose five dollars in the diminished value of land, for one they. will gain in the price of food. Cotton and tobacco planters will also benefit temporarily, at the cost of the consumers of cotton and tobacco. Wages, estimated in articles of consumption, must fall greatly, and immigration will diminish to the severe loss of ship owners. The capitalist will experience a daily diminishing power to invest his capital safely at the ordinary rate of interest, and thus it is, that the war upon labour and capital will be made. With the diminution of the power to invest capital to advantage, there must be an increasing tendency to its accumulation in banks, unproductive to its owners. With every day, the demand for stocks