100 CHANGING SITE OF CAPITAL. [CHAP. XXVII. 



gigantic strides to wealth, population and power, which that city 

 was destined to make ; he liked to behold it in imagination, as it 

 will be in reality, built up from the bank of the river to the mar 

 gin of the lake, sustaining and supporting a happy, industrious, 

 and enterprising population of millions, and being at the same 

 time the great emporium of the trade and commerce of the world.&quot; 



Although I talked much with Louisianiaris of different classes 

 in society, as to their reasons for changing the site of the capital, 

 I never could satisfy myself that I had fathomed the truth, and 

 suspect that a spirit of envy and antagonism of country against 

 town lies more at the bottom of the measure than they were 

 willing to confess, aggravated, perhaps, in this case, by the rivalry 

 of two races. No one pretended that they wished to retreat to 

 a village, from fear that the populace, or mob, of New Orleans 

 might control the free action of the representative body. Some 

 told me, that as their members received pay, they were desirous 

 of taking away from them all temptations to protract the session, 

 which the charms of a luxurious metropolis afforded. They also 

 affirmed that, by living in so dear a place, their representatives 

 acquired extravagant notions in regard to the expenditure of pub 

 lic money, and that they were exposed to the influence of rich 

 merchants and capitalists, who gave them good dinners, and 

 brought them round to their opinions. 



I asked if a convention for remodeling the constitution had 

 been called for. My informants were generally disposed to think 

 that the time had arrived when such a re-cast of the old system 

 had become unavoidable. The recurrence, they said, of such 

 conventions every twenty-five or thirty years, might seem to 

 European politicians to imply a wish to perpetuate an experi 

 mental state of things ; but where the population had quadrupled 

 since the last convention where thousands of emigrants had 

 poured in from various states, the majority of them speaking a 

 new language, and introducing a new code of laws, into the Sec 

 ond Municipality where circumstances connected with their 

 social, religious, political, and financial affairs had so altered in 

 a word, where they were unavoidably in a transition state, the 

 best way of guarding against revolutionary movements was to 



