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valley of the Mississippi is far more fertile than the coast of the Atlantic ocean. This reason, added to all the others, contributes to drive the Europeans westward—a fact which may be rigorously demonstrated by figures. It is found that the sum total of the population of all the United States has about tripled in the course of forty years. But in the recent states adjacent to the Mississippi, the population has increased thirty-one fold within the same space of time.[1]
The relative position of the central federal power is continually displaced. Forty years ago the majority of the citizens of the Union was established upon the coast of the Atlantic, in the environs of the spot upon which Washington now stands; but the great body of the people is now advancing inland and to the north, so that in twenty years the majority will unquestionably be on the western side of the Alleganies. If the Union goes on to subsist, the basin of the Mississippi is evidently marked out, by its fertility and its extent, as the future centre of the federal government. In thirty or forty years, that tract of country will have assumed the rank which naturally belongs to it. It is easy to calculate that its population, compared to that of the coast of the Atlantic, will be, in round numbers, as 40 to 11. In a few years the states which founded the Union will lose the direction of its policy, and the population of the valleys of the Mississippi will preponderate in the federal assemblies.
This constant gravitation of the federal power and influence toward the northwest, is shown every ten years, when a general census of the population is made, and the number of delegates which each state sends to congress is settled afresh.[2] In 1790 Virginia had nineteen representatives in congress. This number continued to increase until the year 1813, when it reached to twenty-three: from that time it began to decrease, and in 1833, Virginia elected only twenty-one representatives.[3] During the same
- ↑ Darby's view of the United States, p. 444.
- ↑ It may be seen that in the course of the last ten years (1820-'30) the population of one district, as for instance, the state of Delaware, has increased in the proportion of 5 per cent.; while that of another, as the territory of Michigan, has increased 250 per cent. Thus the population of Virginia has augmented 13 per cent., and that of the border state of Ohio 61 per cent., in the same space of time. The general table of these changes, which is given in the National Calendar, displays a striking picture of the unequal fortunes of the different states.
- ↑ It has just been said that in the course of the last term the population of Virginia
