Page:Boissonnas, Un Vaincu, English, 1875.djvu/46



As much as the customs of the lumberjacks in the north could differ from those of the planters in the south, so differed their interests. While the states, producers of cotton, needed free exportation ; the states, producers of cloth, wanted measures that would retain the precious commodity, enabling them to transform it before its delivery to the consumption of the whole world. This was but one of the subjects of litigation. Many others, equally important, sprung up each day.

The habit of expressing similar votes on similar questions had assembled in one group in Congress the representation of the northern states ; and in another group, the representation of the southern states. But, for a long time, the first of those parties had been increasing in strength and in self-confidence ; whereas the second remained stationary. It was in the North, and not in the South, that immigration constantly brought new recruits.

In the North, the immigrant finds the climate and the productions of his own country. He can cultivate them himself. Why on earth would he go to the South, in those immense plantations of sugar cane that stretch as far as the eye can see, under a torrid sky, or among those rice fields, with their swampy lands, exhaling fevers deadly for the white ?

The population was, therefore, increasing quickly in the North. The colonized states started to colonize, and the new territories, no sooner had they reached a population of 60,000