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A little sterling sympathy would melt
The poor man's heart to kind humility,
Far easier than heaps of sterling gold.

The great desire sympathetic hearts
To beat with theirs in gentle unison;
But the poor, lowly ones of earth, demand
The hearts of others, as their daily bread,
And for them bend in gratitude to God.

E. T.

THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY."

THE great central valley of the northern continent of America, has for centuries been, not only an object of attention to the civilized world, but, directly and indirectly, it has exerted the profoundest influence upon the destinies of European nations, the three most powerful of which have suc cessively contended for its mastery, and with equal success. Their claims, colonies, and possessions have, one after the other, been swallowed up in the great American nation, which is even now completing the expulsion of the Spanish power from this continent. This great valley, in favor of the value of which, each nation that has penetrated into it, has entertained the most sanguine ideas, forms, as it were, a great amphitheatre, walled on the east by the Alleghany, and on the west by the Rocky Mountains. It contains 1,500,000 square miles of area, and is traversed in its whole length by the Mississippi, which, with its tributary streams, drains the mighty surface into the Gulf of Mexico. The exterior of this great basin on the east is occupied by the Atlantic States of the Union, spread over a strip averaging 100 miles breadth, from the ocean to the Alleghany ridge, and 1200 miles in length, comprising 120,000 square miles of Atlantic coast. On the Pacific, the average breadth, from the Rocky Mountains to the ocean, is 750 miles, and the length 2,700 miles, embracing 2,025,000 square miles; but a large portion of its surface is unavailable for agriculture. The vast valley of the Mississippi is everywhere teeming with natural wealth, and inviting the industry of the hardy immigrants.

From the first discovery of this continent, all the nations of Europe seemed deeply impressed with the idea that great wealth and power were one day to be connected with the fertile soil drained by the "father of waters." In the early part of the 16th century the Spaniards, stimulated by their success in Mexico, used great and repeated exertions to penetrate the gloomy wilderness from the South, in search of the precious metals; and ages after those hopes had proved delusive, they clung with tenacity to the provinces they had overrun. From the North, the adventurous French, led by those Catholic missionaries to whom the world has been much indebted for explorations on this continent, discovered the head waters of the Missis

* History of the Discovery and Settlement of the Valley of the Mississippi by the three great European Powers, Spain, France and Great Britain, and the subsequent occupation, settlement and extension of civil government by the United States, until the year 1846. By John W. Monette, M. D. 2 vols. Harper Brothers.

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sippi and its tributaries, and followed them southward, until they encountered the posts of the Spaniards. Following these religious pioneers, who pointed the way, the French formed settlements through the Illinois country, laying the foundation of that St. Louis, which one day is to be, perhaps, the capital of an empire of two hundred millions of souls. The hardy enterprize and steady industry of the French settlers first drew from the virgin soil of the Wabash and Illinois the real wealth of the new continent. curious that, while the colonies of the French and Spanish were formed by the most hardy enterprize and self-sacrificing devotion, the domains of the British in the great valley, were, for the most part, the result of the knavery, fraud and violence of the British government. The progress of these settlements, the heroism, sufferings and adventures of the early settlers, are faithfully and well delineated in the volumes mentioned at the head of this article. Mr. Monette has, in a true spirit of American nationality, described in a clear and interesting manner, the military colonies of the Spaniards, the peaceful and industrious settlements of the French, and the mixed character of the British progress. That grasping and venal government, from the earliest times down to the settlement of the Oregon, pursued a uniform system of buying up the reports of foreign discoverers, and making them the basis for unjust claims on the rights of others, which she failed not to back up with bullying and violence. It is remarkable that the pretensions of all three of these nations have been swallowed up in the astonishing progress of the great American people. The British claims in the valley were extinguished by the indomitable spirit of our fathers; and the operation of free institutions, in giving play to Anglo-Saxon energies, is signally made apparent in the fact that the Spanish settlements on the South, and the French settlements on the Ohio and Mississippi, remained stationary for more than one hundred years, until the population of the old Atlantic States crowning the Alleghanies, poured down into the valley in torrents, overrunning the countries and swarming around settlements of centuries duration, overwhelmed them in the general progress, and wrested from France and Spain the fair territory that they had so long neglected to improve, and the value of which had been so misunderstood.

The great valley is remarkable for having been the basis and theatre of the most stupendous and disastrous paper schemes known to history. The first was that of John Law, being the celebrated "Mississippi scheme" of the early part of the eighteenth century. It is remarkable as not only having drawn out the whole science of paper money, and practically developed its operation, but as having been through the effects of the revulsion on French finance, one of the leading causes of the revolution of 1789. When the idea of obtaining the precious metals from the new country had in some degree subsided, it became evident that the fur trade with the Indians, and the agricultural industry of a dense population, were alone the means of realizing wealth; Mr. Monette remarks

"To accomplish this object, large grants of land were made to influential and enterprising men for the purpose of establishing new colonies upon the Mississippi. The largest grants were located upon the banks of the river, within 300 miles above New-Orleans; others were located upon Red River, upon the Washita, upon the Yazoo, and upon the Arkansas. The grant upon the Arkansas was made to the noted John Law himself, the Scotch financier, who was now at the head of the Bank of France. Law stipulated to colonize Arkansas with 1500 German emigrants from Provence, in France, and to keep a sufficient military force for their protection."

On this foundation grew up that famous paper bubble which turned

France into a great gambling-house. It drew in all the resources of the government as well as absorbed the means of Louisiana. The whole French world was paper mad, and the ruinous end was not avoided by the rigorous measures adopted by the government at the instigation of Law. To prevent individuals from keeping specie, an enactment, forbidding persons to keep more than $100 in specie under heavy penalties, sent $9,000,000 into the treasury. The end, however, came, and the wide-spread ruin in France terminated ultimately in the overthrow of the monarchy. In that revulsion

the colony of Louisiana suffered consequences more disastrous than arose from any other source. The substance of the people had been drawn from them by the paper circulation, and extreme destitution and starvation overtook them when that paper became valueless. The lesson was, however, measurably lost upon the public; and similar attempts on the part of speculators to possess themselves of the wealth of the valley by obtaining it for promises, have frequently been made since. From the time of Law to the present day, no new light has been thrown upon the paper system. His writings carried it to its zenith, and his practice exposed its fallacies. The world has, however, been slow to believe in its folly. M. Thiers, when Minister of France, in speaking upon the subject of the recharter of the Bank of France in 1840, remarked

"A very celebrated man, Law, who was the author of that famous system which overthrew the finances of our country rather more than a century ago, has written on the subject a pamphlet which may be called classical. It contains all that we have been able to say since; and I affirm that Law, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, understood quite as much of the question as any of those who have since discussed the subject of banking."

Notwithstanding that the early settlers of Louisiana were blessed with the genius of this man, and with what results, the volumes under notice show too clearly, the same paper speculations have constantly recurred. But a few years after the explosion of Law's scheme, renewed disasters overtook the infant settlements, in consequence of the issues of paper by the government to provide means of resisting the aborigines. The colonists suffered as much from the paper of the bankers as from the knives of the Indians. Since the annexation of all that territory to the United States, the "paper pestilence" has repeatedly devastated it. In the years 1820-21, the influence of the organization of the National Bank spread bankruptcy among the institutions of that region, and a lapse of ten years again found them in the midst of the wildest speculations, on the eve of another revulsion. The large sums borrowed in Europe during the ten years, 1830-40, reaching over $50,000,000, in the establishment of banking institutions to favor the planting interests, gave an immense impulse to the settlement of the valley, and the revulsion of the system and the repudiation of the debts was a necessary consequence. The scheme of lending money to persons who were to go into a new country to draw from the soil not only their own support, but the money and its interest to be returned, was certainly no more reasonable than the scheme of Law a century previous on the same basis. The result of Law's scheme in 1720 was to bankrupt France and ultimately overturn the throne. The result of the loans by London bankers in 1836-37, to colonists in the same region, resulted in general bankruptcy, and the insolvency of six sovereign states of the valley, and its remote effect may yet be the repudiation of the British debt. We have thus but slightly alluded to the leading paper plagues that have from time to time retarded the progress of that vast section, because they have been among the greatest evils that the people have had to contend with.

The political progress of the settlements, Mr. Monette follows with sound judgment, and a clear understanding; and we know no more interesting study at this juncture, when events have so rapidly followed each, and wars and rumors have hung upon the various claims set up by British and Spanish, and depending upon the original claims of the three nations. The detail of the history is much enlivened by graphic sketches of the manners, habits and customs of the early settlers: the quiet industrious contentment of the early Illinois French, the bold heroism and savage cruelty of the Spanish, the vigorous enterprise, bravery and sufferings of those bold frontier men who, as the vanguard of the advancing civilization from the Atlantic States, subdued both the savage and the wilderness, and prepared the way for the more peaceful settler.

In establishing its empire in the great valley, the United States have had to contend with many enemies; the chief of these were briefly the Spaniards, the French, the British, the natives, and lastly, that remnant of the old tory party among ourselves, the theory of which was anti-progressive, which saw in every square mile added to the " area of freedom" some new combination of evils of unknown and mysterious horror, threatening the safety of our institutions; a party too distrustful of the people to trust them without watching—which supposed the people virtuous and capable of self-government in an area ten miles square, but liable to ruin themselves if allowed 100 square miles to roam in. In the face of all these obstacles the people of the United States have advanced and occupied not only the wilderness, but the settlements of other nations-have reformed and regenerated the whole, and extended the domain of the federal Union. The people who have achieved this, belong to no particular nation, nor to any distinct class; they are described by Mr. Monette, as follows:

"The people of the Mississippi Valley are constituted from all nations, characters, languages and conditions of men. Not a nation of Europe, not a class in all those nations, except royalty, which has not its full representation here; not a State in the Union which has not sent out its colonies to people more western regions; not a sect or denomination of Christians who had not their churches and their ministers here. The subjects of despotic monarchies, and the citizens of the freest republics in the world, all commingle here, and unite to form one people, unique in feeling, character and genius. The Puritan of the North, the Planter of the South, the German and the Iberian, the Briton and the Gaul, and even the sable sons of Africa and the Northern Swede, all are here, each bringing with him his peculiar prejudices, local attachments and predilections, and side by side they have set down together, and have gradually become assimilated in language, feelings, manners and usages."

Such being the people who compose the population of the great valley, the question naturally arises, why is it that such an apparently ill-assorted mass should, under the most trying circumstances, evince unshaken fidelity to the Union, and display so strong an attachment to the older states, that when thrown off from its bosom they come voluntarily back for admission into it? No coldness can repulse their advances; no intrigues defeat their purpose; not even great and pecuniary suffering and inconvenience shake their persevering determination to become members of the great Republic. Surely those who talk idly of a separation of the Union, overlook this great centripetal force, which has so often brought back into the bosom of the federation, as states, those communities that left it as colonies. The influence which induces so many different grades, colors, conditions, and races of men to agree in the desire to adhere to the Union, can be found only in those admirable institutions which approximate so nearly "the greatest good to the

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greatest number." This determination and virtuous patriotism is well portrayed by Mr. Monette, in treating of that trying time which preceded the acquisition of Louisiana. Spain, then in possession of Louisiana, standing astride of the Mississippi, forbade the passage to the sea of those products of western industry which then had no other outlet. For many years the action of the Federal Government was inefficient to their relief. It was in vain contended that the law of nations conferred upon the inhabitants of a river's banks the use of its channel to the sea. Spain denied the right, partly to derive a profit from exorbitant transit duties, and partly to irritate the wes tern states into a separation from the Union, and submission to Spanish rule. So well were intrigues carried on to this effect, through the well applied use of money, at the west; the slow action of the Federal Government, and the desire of a large party at the North that the separation should take place, that the danger became imminent. Spain openly offered the free use of the river, and other privileges to the West, if she would separate from the Union, that could not or would not help them. The virtue of the people triumphed, and Louisiana passing into the hands of Bonaparte, was by him sold to the United States, and finally admitted into the Union in spite of the same kind of opposition that of late has been displayed against Texas. In order to observe the progress of that section, and to form some idea of the country which was sought to be sacrificed to the virulent party intrigues, we will compare from official sources the value of the receipts of produce at New-Orleans from the Western States. In 1802 the value was $2,821,350; in 1846, it was $77,193,464. In 42 years that trade increased thirty-eight hundred per cent! The single item of pork, in bbls. was in 1846 more than the whole business in 1802. The defence of that city from the grasp of Great Britain, who sent the choice troops of Wellington from the Peninsula to perish before Western valor, immortalized the name of Jackson. The acquisition of that vast territory was followed by the cession of Florida, on the part of Spain, in 1819, and the late venerable Andrew Jackson, to whom the country was indebted for the occupancy of Florida, became its first Governor. Which of those who opposed the admission of Louisiana, will now vote for its separation and the establishment of custom houses on the Mississippi? The systematic opposition to the progress of the country became immediately manifest, and Mr. Monette remarks

"The course of Gen. Jackson in the occupancy of Florida, was severely attacked in Congress, by a party of great zeal and activity, at the head of which was Henry Clay, then Speaker of the House; but the General was fully sustained by the President and Cabinet, and by an overwhelming majority in Congress. The people from one end of the United States to the other spoke out, and through the State Legislatures and public meetings, vindicated the decisive and prompt measures adopted by the defender of the South."

The treaty for the purchase of Florida, met, however, with the most strenuous opposition from the North.

"From the earliest period of the Western settlements," we quote from Mr. Monette, "after the adoption of the federal constitution in 1789, the jealousy of New-England, and especially of Massachusetts, was awakened to the danger of losing her ascendency in the nation's government, and in the commercial importance of the country. With this view predominant, they have never failed, when opportunity offered, to embarrass the West in the national councils, and by all means to retard and restrict the extension of its settlements. The same narrow, interested policy induced them to throw every obstacle in the way, to prevent the acquisition of the free navigation of the Mississippi, previous to the treaty of Madrid and subsequently. The same interested policy prompted them to oppose, with

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