the close of navigation in 1837, of the total weight of the cargoes carried on the canal, (somewhat inaccurately denominated in the official tables as its "tonnage,") being 387,506 tons in all, the local proportion furnished by the State was 331,251, while that of the cargoes coming from States west of her limits, and which, for brevity, may be called its "national commerce," amounted only to 56.255. Notwithstanding this disparity, and the slender portion then furnished by the West, an effort was made in the Legislature of 1838, for nationalizing the canal, at least, in public opinion, by pointing out the latent capacity of the agriculture of the States around the lakes, and its inevitable effect in reversing the proportions then existing between the local and the national cargoes. Differences of opinion, honestly entertained, on such a point, could be settled only by time. Twenty-four years have now elapsed, and the following is the result:

TONS REACHING TIDE-WATER BY THE ERIE CANAL.

It will thus be seen that the proportions which, in 1838, were four to one in favor of the "local" commerce, were so entirely reversed that in 1861 they became nearly eight to one in favor of the "national."

By further analyzing the official tables we shall readily detect the cause of this immense increase of the national commerce, in the rapid development of the West, which may he regarded as "national. agriculture," in contradistinction to the local agriculture of New York. The comparative progress of this interior agriculture is strikingly manifest in the cargoes of wheat and wheat flour carried by the canal, being, in barrels:

If to this be added the very important element of Indian corn (the transportation and consumption of which have reached only their infant stages,) the contrast will yet be more striking.

National wheat and flour carried on the canal in 1861, was

National corn was...

Total.....

Local wheat and flour was.

Local corn was.....

Bbls. 6,712,233

6,796,390

showing a national proportion, in these two cereals, exceeding thirteen to

one.

A similar disparity also exists in the products of " the forests," being in

The fact may also be added, though rather incidental to the main subject, that the 494,057 tons of mineral coal transported through the canal and its branches in 1861 were exclusively furnished by the coal fields and coal bearing mountains of Pennsylvania and Ohio, and transmuted into gold by that very transportation.

It is on these facts that we claim that the Erie canal, with the Oswego canal as its co-equal and complement, has now practically become what its early projectors and friends insisted it would eventually become, a national canal. Like the national city of New York, geographically included within the limits of a single State, it belongs virtually to the nation. Its great office is to transport, not the trifling local products of any single state, but the accumulated products and fabrics of great groups of States to and from each other, and to and from foreign nations. Any measure for protecting its commerce, or in any way cheapening its means of transportation, inure to the benefit of the State of New York only in the scanty proportions above exhibited, being at present but one in thirteen for its most valuable cargoes; and even that proportion, small as it is, must steadily diminish under the resistless progress of our western agriculture.

The Erie and Oswego canals carry but a portion of the commerce of the lakes. Nearly all the merchandise which ascends the lakes, requiring expeditious movement, is carried, as it properly should be, by the railways, which also carry a small portion of the descending cargoes.

Of the descending agricultural products, the proportions of flour and grain coming from the lakes and carried eastward, in 1861, were as follows:

In respect to the total amount of the commerce of the lakes, it may be stated in general, that the descending portion consists mainly of agricultural products, with a moderate per centage from the forests and mineral regions; and that the ascending portion embraces the equivalent amount of manufactures, merchandise, and other products or property received in exchange. Its pecuniary value in both directions is between two and three hundred millions.

This descending commerce is almost entirely the growth of the last twenty years. In 1837 it contributed to the Erie canal, in values, but $4,713,636. So slow was its early progress that, as late as 1841, the amount of wheat and flour received at Buffalo was only 5,785,960 bushels; and of Indian corn, but 201,031 bushels.

being 59,007,832 bushels of these two cereals, with about 2,000,000 of smaller grains.

The total amount of cereals of all descriptions carried on the lakes, and consisting almost exclusively of wheat and flour and Indian corn, as extracted from the carefully prepared reports of the boards of trade of their principal cities, is as follows:

The proportions may not be entirely accurate, but they suffice for the main purpose, which is to bring boldly out the one, gigantic and all but overwhelming fact, that the cereal wealth yearly floated on these waters now exceeds 100,000,000 of bushels. It is difficult to present a distinct idea of a quantity so enormous. Suffice it to say that the portion of it (about two-thirds) moving to market on the Erie and Oswego canals requires a line of boats more than forty miles long to carry it. The whole 100,000,000 of bushels, if placed in a single line of barrels of five bushels each, would span the American continent from New York to San Francisco, with a remnant nearly long enough to cross the Pacific. Shall not the American fleets, which yearly carry a mass of food so enormous, be protected from maritime assault and devastation?

The limits of the present communication forbid the full consideration of the transcendent importance of a cereal wealth, so immense and capable of such enormous increase. Its existence is a new fact in the history of man. In quantity, it already much exceeds the whole export of cereals from the Russian empire, the great compeer of the United States. Under the comprehensive and magnanimous statesmanship of that truly continental power, a magnificent system of canals, and river improvements, and railways, steadily prosecuted through every political vicissitude, from the days of PETER THE GREAT down to the reign of the present enlightened Emperor, connects its vast agricultural interior with the

ocean and the Mediterranean, through the Baltic, the White, and the Black seas-encircling the empire with points of agricultural export, stretching round from Odessa to Riga and St. Petersburg, and thence away to Archangel-and yet its total yearly export of cereals was, in 1854, but 27,000,000 of bushels, and in 1857 only 49,000,000, being a little less than half the amount carried in 1861 upon our American lakes. It was the constant aim and effort of ancient Rome, even in the zenith of its power, to provision the capital and the adjacent provinces from the outlying portions of the empire. The yearly crop contributed by Egypt, under PTOLEMY PHILADELPHUS, was 15,000,000 of bushels. Under the prudent administration of the Emperor SEVERUS, a large store of corn was accumulated and kept on hand, sufficient to guard the empire from famine for seven years. The total amount thus provided was but 190,000,000 of bushels. The product of 1850 of cereals in the five lake States of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, was 252,000,000 of bushels; being of wheat 39,000,000, and of Indian corn 177,000,000. In ten years, as shown by the census of 1860, it increased to 354,000,000 bushels; being of wheat 78,000,000, and corn 275,000,000, the residues consisting of the smaller grains.

Nor is this all. A prospect far more grand and national is just opening on the commerce of the lakes. The great and long-cherished measure of connecting their southwestern extremity, by an adequate water communication, directly with the Mississippi, near its confluence with the Missouri, and thus uniting, in one vast continental system, the broad basin of the lakes with the great network of navigable rivers, outspread for thousands of miles over the wide expanse of the great central interior of the Union, is now awaiting the decision of the national Legislature, which, in view of responsibilities so august, might well resume the significant title of "Continental Congress," adopted by their fathers. Let us not attempt to lift the vail from a future so stupendous, inevitably destined to repeat, on a yet grander scale, that immense agricultural development around the lakes which has now become historical. The rich cereals of Missouri, and Iowa, and Minnesota, and Kansas-States just creeping from their cradles-are already numbered by hundreds of millions of bushels, much of it perishing or wastefully consumed for fuel, merely for the want of this new avenue to the Atlantic.

The prediction in 1838 that our great interior States must eventually "become the common granary of the Union, and discharge the duty of supplying subsistence to the surrounding communities," though seriously questioned at the time, is already nearly, if not entirely verified. The fundamental law of demand and supply, necessarily causing the most advantageous distribution of labor, especially in a continental nation united like ours, under a common government, is now, at least partially, obeyed. The wheat crops of New York, whose principal and proper office is commerce, has already fallen to 8,681,000 bushels, hardly enough to feed her population for one-third of the year. The bushels produced in 1860 by all New England were but 1,077,000, sufficient only for three weeks' consumption. Surely, if any portion of our whole republic is especially interested in securing the food-bearing vessels of the lakes from the possibility of capture or interuption, it is the 3,000,000 of sagacious, loyal, and thrifty people who inhabit the granite ranges and rocky promontories of that ancient and noble family of States who, finding it easier

and better to spin than to plow, compel their numerous and sparkling waterfalls, so richly scattered over their rugged country, to purchase from the fertile West the bread which they require. The magic power of the Union so entirely abolishes East and West, that the fabrics of the East are practically only the food of the West, reappearing in another shape, and in that more portable and convenient form, increasing the sum of our foreign exports.

It was a fortunate, if not a providential, coincidence, which led, in 1846, to the removal of the artificial and arbitrary restraints on the freedom of commerce created by the British corn laws, just as the vast agricultural power of our lake States began to dawn on the civilized world. The imports of cereals into the British Islands instantly rose from 37,918,000 bushels in 1846, to 115,059,000 bushels in 1860; and it may be safely affirmed that the year will never again arrive when those islands will yield food enough for their own consumption. Despite any and every struggle, the stern necessities of hunger will bind them at last, with bands stronger than iron, to the nation that can feed them.

Our tables of exports of domestic produce for the last forty years are replete with instruction as to the commercial and fiscal value, for national purposes, of the commerce of the Lakes. The total value of breadstuffs and provisions yearly exported to foreign countries, as exhibited by those tables, was $12,341,901 in 1821; and in 1836, had actually diminished to $10,624,130; and again in 1838, to $9,636,650. Up to 1845, it had increased only to $16,743,421, but in 1847, when the agricultural products of the great interior States began to pour in heavily from the Lakes (as shown by that unerring barometer, the Erie canal,) it rose at once to $68,701,921.

Since that time it has fluctuated more or less, with the varying necessities of the nations of Europe; but, in 1856, the amount had reached $77.187,301, which was again increased in the year ending the 30th of June, 1861, to $93,969,682, exclusive of $4,245,410 in cattle, hides, and tallow, which, for the present inquiry, might be fairly included. It is a fact of much significance that, in the year last mentioned, the total value of the cotton exported was but $34,051,482, and during the current year little or nothing, conclusively showing that we shall be compelled, at least for a season, mainly to rely on our own exports of food and our manufactures, which are its direct and indirect derivative, for the means of importing the duty-paying foreign commodities from which the Treasury must derive its revenues, apart from taxation. The value of the manufactures exported in the year last mentioned (excluding those of cotton, which were $7,957,038) was $25,149,037, which, added to the $93,969,682 of food, makes total export of $119,118,689. This sum will purchase its equivalent in foreign commodities, on which an average import duty of 25 per cent would be $29,779,471; conclusively demonstrating that the commerce of the lakes, for which these national canals furnish the necessary outlets to the seaboard, has become eminently and emphatically national in its character and consequences; that it constitutes a fundamental and vital element of our national strength, political, commercial, and fiscal; and that, in all these respects, it has now attained a national importance that American statesmen will not willingly, and cannot safely disregard.

With the view thus presented of the direct influence of the agricultu