I 
PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION . 13 
proper transportation, but I record the fact as a simile of what may 
follow a similar effect arising from the want of transportation. 
The secret of our present prosperity is that labor has not 
only been in good demand, but has been well rewarded, but when 
the charm is once broken and labor ceases to find remunerative 
reward, then production is retarded, consumption ceases to a like 
extent, and if the cause long remains, population will recede. 
This is exemplified in the case of Mexico, that now contains less 
than a third of the population it did in the sixteenth century, 
when overrun by Hernando Cortes and his Castilian band of ma. 
rauders. No roads, no canals, no public improvements of mo¬ 
ment have been undertaken in that government. Hence product¬ 
ive energy has been diverted from its legitimate sphere to ma¬ 
rauding, rapirle, waste and pillage, and according to M. Say and 
Dr. Adam Smith, large districts in Asia have by like means been 
depopulated under the miserable vicissitudes of venal and volup¬ 
tuous rulers, whose fiscal exactions have been greater than labor 
could bear. 
Oar mechanic arts, agricultural and mining interests have been 
expanding more rapidly than our means of transportation. As 
one illustration of this fact, who that does not remember to have 
seen the two wonderful facts gazetted in the same newspaper, that 
while we were burning our food for fuel in the west, for the want 
of adequate means of transportation, thousands of persons in por¬ 
tions of Europe were dying of hunger. 
One fact is clear : that we have only one practical market—New 
■York. We may reach that mart in two directions and by three 
routes, 1st, by the lakes and Erie canal; 2d, by railway ; 3d, by 
the Mississippi river. The first is clogged by various obstructions 
and needs improvement. The second is inadequate and too ex¬ 
pensive, and third, when we turn our attention down the mighty 
Mississippi, and calculate 4,000 miles before we can reach our 
point of destination, with a reshipment at New Orleans, and the 
vicissitudes of ocean transport, we are discouraged, but when Mr. 
Elliott tells us that that mighty river carries a mean volume of 
. over 60,000,000 cubic feet of water per minute, each cubic yard 
containing 151 cubic inches of solid earth, we find that the 
