288 SPEECH OP 



" Some gentlemen appeared to consider this an eastern measure. 

 It was not so. The west had a deep interest in it. It was well 

 known to all who resided in the great grain-growing states of the 

 interior, that our principal difficulty was to find a market for the 

 surplus productions of our fertile soil. Every thing that could 

 supply the wants of man, that constituted the necessaries of life, 

 grew up almost spontaneously, in the greatest abundance. But 

 we had no market. We were continually racking our invention 

 to find new and increased demands for our produce, and to open 

 new avenues to the seaboard, so as to lessen the cost of transport- 

 ation, and to increase competition among purchasers. This trade, 

 which we now propose to foster, is daily increasing, and it fur- 

 nishes a market already for a large amount of our surplus produce. 

 This fleet of four hundred vessels could not go to sea without one 

 hundred thousand barrels of flour; eighty or one hundred thousand 

 barrels of pork and beef; forty or fifty thousand pieces of sail- 

 cloth ; eight or ten thousand tons of cordage ; besides large quan- 

 tities of corn, beans, and various other articles necessary to a long 

 voyage. Have the states bordering on the Ohio no interest in 

 such a market as this ? Does not Kentucky want a market for 

 her hemp ? Do not Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, want purchasers 

 for their flour, pork, beef, and corn, which they all produce in 

 such abundance ? Assuredly they do ; and it is chiefly to the 

 manufacturing and commercial states, along the Atlantic, that they 

 must look for the consumption of their produce, especially in time 

 of peace. It was for our interest, therefore, in a pecuniary point 

 of view, as a mere question of dollars and cents, to foster this 

 trade, and to enlarge its capacity to consume the productions of 

 the farming class of the great Mississippi valley. This consider- 

 ation seemed to present the national importance of the measure 

 more clearly to the mind ; and finely illustrated what must be ap- 

 parent to every r r i --'jting man, that we could not extend the aid 

 of the government in this country to any portion of the citizens 



