452 FUTURE PROSPECTS. 



and the systems of governing and educating the people, are 

 not surpassed by any other portion of America, and inhabi 

 tants are alone wanting to complete its greatness. 



The price of Government land being the same over the 

 United States, the prairies of Illinois will be preferred by all 

 judicious settlers to the forests which lie nearer the Atlantic, 

 while the arrangements which have been made with the 

 Indians will tend for a time to check population from pro 

 ceeding to the west of the districts already surveyed. The 

 advantages of the country have only been made public of late 

 years, and less seems to be known regarding it in the eastern 

 portions of the United States and the Canadas than in 

 Britain. Emigrants have, however, been streaming in to 

 Illinois for a year or two from the different parts of Europe 

 and the eastern parts of America, and their number is likely 

 to increase. I have frequently alluded to the anxiety of 

 people in the eastern States and the Canadas to sell their 

 lands. This desire proceeds from the advantages of a prairie 

 country, in which many of the farmers in other portions of 

 America obtain better farms than those which they formerly 

 possessed, and at a twentieth part of the price at which they 

 sell their original ones. There is consequently a class of 

 comparatively wealthy settlers attracted to the west, indepen 

 dent of the natural movement of the United States people, 

 alluded to at p. 400, 401. But however great the influx of 

 population may be, there is sufficient room for all who are 

 likely to desire a settlement. Illinois being about the size of 

 England, might furnish a greater supply of food, from the gene 

 ral superiority of its soil, and seems to me to be nearly capable 

 of sustaining the whole inhabitants of England in addition to 

 its present population, or nearly seventy times the inhabitants 

 it now possesses. 



The settlement of the prairies in the western parts of the 

 United States will affect the whole population of the Union. 

 The profits of farming in the present state of the country 

 regulate the wages of labour generally, and the facility with 

 which prairie land is cultivated compared to forest land, will 

 attract the operatives of every profession, and thereby have a 

 tendency to keep up wages. Although the price of forest and 



