ties are enabled more readily to combine their efforts for the common good. One requires carts, or wagons, while the other has corn seeking to be converted into flour; one has hides to spare, while the other has an excess of shoes, or cloth. One has a windmill; while the other rejoices in the possession of a sawmill. — Exchanges increase; employments become from day to day more diversified; and the towns increase in numbers and in strength, by reason of the increased amount of commerce. Roads being now made in the direction of other settlements, the forests and swamps by which they have thus far been separated, gradually disappear-yielding to cultivation the richest soils, with increased returns to labor, enabling the laborer to obtain from year to year better food, clothing, and shelter, and with less expenditure of muscular force. The danger of famine now disappears; life is prolonged, and numbers increase; with corresponding increase in the facility of combination for every useful purpose-the distinguishing characteristic of civilization. With further growth of population and of wealth, the desires of man, and his ability to gratify them, steadily advance. The nation that has now been formed has an excess of wool, but is deficient in sugar; whereas, in a neighboring one may be found excess of sugar, while the supply of wool is insufficient. The two are, however, separated from each other by broad forests, deep swamps, and rapid rivers - obstacles to intercourse the removal of which is required to await the further progress of population and of wealth. Both of these now further grow, and next the forests and swamps disappear-giving place to rich farms, through which broad roads are made, with great bridges, and enabling the merchant readily to transport wool to exchange. with his now rich neighbors for their surplus sugar. Nations next combining their exertions, wealth grows with still increased rapidity — facilitating the drainage of marshes, and thus bringing into activity the richest soils; while coal-mines cheaply furnish fuel for converting limestone into lime, and iron ore into spades and axes—or into rails for the new roads required for sending to market the vast products of the fertile soils now cultivated; and for bringing back the large supplies of sugar, tea, coffee, and other products of distant lands, with which intercourse is now maintained. At each step, population and wealth, happiness and prosperity, make a new bound; and men realize with difficulty the fact that the country which now affords to tens of millions all the necessaries, comforts, conveniences, and luxuries of life, is the same that when the superabundant land had been occupied by tens of thousands only-gave to that limited number scanty supplies of the poorest food-so scanty, that famines were frequent, and followed in their wake by pestilence, which, at brief intervals, swept from the earth the population of the little and scattered settlements of the hills. We have here a constantly accelerating motion of society and an increase of commerce, resulting from a steady diminution in the proportion of the labor of the community required for effecting changes of place, consequent upon a steady increase in the power of combination, and in the development of individuality resulting from diversity of employment. As the village grows and becomes more self-sufficing, it acquires the ability to improve its communications with neighboring villages; and all are next enabled to aid in effecting improvements in the roads to the more distant town. As employment becomes more diversified in the town, it is enabled to combine its efforts with its neighbor towns, to effect improvements in the transport to and from the more distant city; and as the cities grow, they, in like manner, are enabled to unite in facilitating intercourse with distant nations. The power to maintain commerce grows thus, with every diminution in the necessity for trade and transportation. § 3. The necessity for effecting changes of place is an obstacle interposed by nature to the gratification of the wishes of man; and it was required that it should exist, in order that his faculties might be stimulated to exertion for its removal. Those faculties exist in all men, but they remain latent when not stimulated into action by a feeling of the advantage that must result from increased power to maintain intercourse with their fellow-men. The greater the facility of intercourse, the more are its benefits appreciated, and the greater becomes the consciousness of power to effect further improvement-looking to entire removal of the obstacle standing in the way of direct intercourse between men and their fellow-men - or, commerce. In the early stages of society, it is so great as to be almost insuperable; and hence it is that we even now see that while the value of commodities at the place of consumption is, in many cases, so great as to cause them to be almost beyond the reach of any but the wealthy, their value at the place of production is so small as to keep their producer in a state of poverty, and retain him in the position of slave, not only to nature, but also to his fellow-man. The sugar producer of Brazil cannot obtain clothing with which to conceal his nakedness; while the cloth producer of England is equally unable to obtain the sugar required for the sustenance of his family and himself. That such should be the case, results from no defect in the arrangements of Providence nature yielding abundantly in return to the efforts of both, and doing her part towards enabling them to be well clothed and fed; but it does result from error in the arrangements of men. The man of England, and of Brazil, would have full supplies of food would be well clothed-and would become more free, could the one obtain all the cloth given for his sugar, and the other all the sugar given for his cloth; and it is because so large a portion is absorbed in the passage from one to the other, that the condition of both is so near akin to slavery. But thirty years since, the price of a bushel of wheat in Ohio was less than a third of that at which it would sell in Philadelphia or New York-all the difference being absorbed in the passage from the producer to the consumer. The first then obtained little cloth in exchange for his food, and the latter little food in exchange for his cloth.-But recently, corn abounded in Castile, for which no market could be found; while Andalusia, part of the same kingdom, looked to America for supplies of food.-At the present day, food is wasted in one part of India, while hundreds of thousands perish of famine in another. So is it everywhere, in default of that diversity of employment which makes a market for its products on, or near, the land. "In Russia, a propitious season and an abundant crop," says a recent traveller, “do not guaranty a profitable season to the farmer. The prices," dependent as they are upon the chances and changes of distant lands, "may," as he continues, "suddenly have fallen so low, that no physical combination of circumstances can benefit him. * * * He is thus the victim of circumstances"over which he can exercise no control whatsoever. "Totally un able to affect the price of grain himself, it depends on the demand for foreign countries, the facilities of communication, and his position with regard to them with many other causes incidental to an immense, but thinly-peopled, country, affected in its extremities by very different temperatures, liable during the same year to famine and plenty occurring in distant quarters, between which it is matter of pure hazard if there exist any means of communication." The picture here presented is that of all purely agricultural countries—their crops being almost altogether absorbed in the cost of transportation, because of the exceeding distance of the consumer from the producer. Hence it is, that slavery, or serfage, prevails in those communities in which employments are not diversified. Sixty years since, the utility of the produce of Ohio was very small indeed so small, that it required, as then was said, all that an acre could be made to yield, "to pay for a pair of breeches." Thirty years since, its utility had much increased, but yet was very trivial—the major part of it being required for feeding the men and horses who carried it to market; whereas, the value of all commodities needed by the farmer was so great, that it required fifteen tons of wheat to pay for a single ton of iron. The people of that State had then but little power over uature; but, as they have increased in numbers, power has been obtained, and they are now in the enjoyment of wealth-because of the removal of some of the obstacles standing in the way of commerce. To this it is due, that while the utility of their own products has largely increased, by reason of the diminished proportion required to feed the men and animals engaged in transportation; the value of the iron has so greatly diminished, that six or eight tons may now be obtained in return for the same wheat that would then have been given in exchange for one. As a consequence of this, a single year enables the farmer to add more, in quantity and quality, to his machinery of cultivation, than before he could do in twenty-substituting the continuous motion of the horse-rake and of the reaping and threshing machines, for the constantly intermitted one of the hand-rake, the reaping-hook, the scythe, and the flail—and enabling him to apply himself with in * OLIPHANT: Russian Shores of the Black Sea, p. 134. creased rapidity to the removal of the yet remaining obstacles consequent upon the necessity for effecting changes of place. The better the roads, the greater is the demand for machinery ; and the greater the latter, the greater is the tendency to have the miller, the blacksmith, the carpenter, the spinner, the weaver, the miner, and the iron-founder come to take their places near the farmer; with great increase in the motion of society, in the attraction of home, and in the power of combination with people abroad. Man's power over nature tends, thus, steadily to grow, and every stage of his progress towards power is accompanied, naturally and necessarily, with diminished resistance to his further efforts. There is, therefore, a constant tendency towards acceleration of motion; and the momentum of a body is, as the reader knows, as its weight, multiplied by its velocity. The Indian trails of the Six Nations must have cost a greater amount of effort than was subsequently required for laying out, clearing, and making the State road; and that, in its turn, was a work of more serious labor than was, but a few years later, the construction of the railroad. The turnpike road from Baltimore to Cumberland, a distance of a hundred and eighty miles, was, but forty years since, so great a work, that the Federal treasury was required to bear the cost of its construction; but railroads now increase with such rapidity, that the people of the Ohio Valley already have the choice among many such, when they desire to visit the Atlantic cities. The Santa Maria, Columbus's great ship, had a capacity of but ninety tons; and yet the construction of such a vessel was then a far more serious matter than is now that of a steamer which would accomplish the same voyage in fewer weeks than she required of months. Here, as everywhere, the first step requires the most effort, and yields the smallest return. With every additional one, the value of man rises, and that of commodities falls and with each we see an increase in the wealth at his command, giving him increased facilities for further accumulation. Thus far, however, we have made but a single step in that direction. The power to become useful to man is a force latent in all the matter by which he is surrounded; but the development of that force is everywhere retarded by the difficulty attendant upon effecting changes of place. The savage is compelled to leave upon the ground, for the consumption of birds of prey, a most |