With a river, lake, and coastwise commerce estimated at over
two thousand millions of dollars per year; with a railway traffic
of four to six thousand millions per year, and the annual domestic
exchanges of the country running up to nearly ten thousand millions
per year; with over two thousand millions of dollars invested in
manufacturing, mechanical, and mining industry; with over five hundred
millions of acres of land in actual occupancy, valued, with their
appurtenances, at over seven thousand millions of dollars, and
producing annually crops valued at over three thousand millions of
dollars; with a realm which, if the density of Belgium's population
were possible, would be vast enough to include all the present
inhabitants of the world; and with equal rights guaranteed to even the
poorest and humblest of our forty millions of people--we can, with
a manly pride akin to that which distinguish'd the palmiest days of
Rome, claim," &c., &c., &c.--_Vice-President Colfax's Speech, July 4,
1870_.
LATER--_London "Times," (Weekly,) June 23, '82_.
"The wonderful wealth-producing power of the United States defies and
sets at naught the grave drawbacks of a mischievous protective tariff,
and has already obliterated, almost wholly, the traces of the greatest
of modern civil wars. What is especially remarkable in the present
development of American energy and success is its wide and equable
distribution. North and south, east and west, on the shores of the
Atlantic and the Pacific, along the chain of the great lakes, in the
valley of the Mississippi, and on the coasts of the gulf of Mexico,
the creation of wealth and the increase of population are signally
exhibited.
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