294 MR HAMILTON ON THE PROSPECTS OF THE UNION. 



fore this period, it is very certain that the pressure of the 

 population, on the means of subsistence, especially in the 

 Atlantic States, will be very great. The price of labour will 

 have fallen, while that of the necessaries of life must be pro 

 digiously increased. The poorer and more suffering class 

 will want the means of emigrating to a distant region of un 

 occupied territory. Poverty and misery will be abroad ; the 

 great majority of the people will be without property of any 

 kind, except the thewes and sinews with which God has en 

 dowed them ; they will choose legislators under the imme 

 diate pressure of privation ; and if in such circumstances, any 

 man can anticipate security of property, his conclusion must 

 be founded, I suspect, rather on the wishes of a sanguine 

 temperament, than on any rational calculation of probabilities. 

 66 It is the present policy of the government to encourage 

 and stimulate the premature growth of a manufacturing popu 

 lation. In this it will not be successful, but no man can 

 contemplate the vast internal resources of the United States, 

 the varied productions of their soil the unparalleled extent 

 of river communication the inexhaustible stores of coal and 

 iron spread even on the surface and doubt that the Ame 

 ricans are destined to become a great manufacturing nation. 

 Whenever increase of population shall have reduced the price 

 of labour to a par with that of other countries, these advan 

 tages will come into full play ; the United States will then 

 meet England on fair terms in every market of the world, and, 

 in many branches of industry at least, will attain an unques 

 tioned superiority. Huge manufacturing cities will spring up 

 in various quarters of the Union, the population will congre 

 gate in masses, and all the vices incident to such a condition 

 of society will attain speedy maturity. Millions of men will 

 depend for subsistence on the demand for a particular manu 

 facture, and yet this demand will of necessity be liable to 

 perpetual fluctuation. When the pendulum vibrates in one 

 direction, there will be an influx of wealth and prosperity ; 

 when it vibrates in the other, misery, discontent, and turbu 

 lence will spread through the land. A change of fashion, a 

 war, the glut of a foreign market, a thousand unforeseen and 

 inevitable accidents are liable to produce this, and deprive 



