Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 9).djvu/217

 1803. Louisiana being acquired at the general expense, and not by the inhabitants of the western country alone, makes it evident that the transaction was viewed as an important national affair. Perhaps it was with the intention of producing a dismemberment, that the ministry of England made the attack on New Orleans. The defence was conducted in a national form, and not exclusively by the people of the western country; and the British government was not gratified by any overture of the inhabitants for becoming tributary. The supposed conspiracy of Aaron Burr, for detaching the transmontane country from the Eastern States, was not found to amount to levying war against the Union.[115] The evidence that could be obtained from his small party of associates and others, was not sufficient to convict him. The demagogue is not looked on as a personage dangerous to public tranquillity;—a decisive proof that the American people are confident in the strength of the ties by which they are knit together. The western settlements have the strongest incitements to remain in close conjunction, with their eastern neighbours. {185} A separation from them in times of war would cut off all communication by land with the eastern coast; an inconvenience that would greatly aggravate any attempt to blockade the mouth of the Mississippi. A separation would retard the ingress of population; it would injure internal trade; it would occasion an additional expense in supporting a separate government, and it would deprive them of the protection of the United States' Navy. It will scarcely be alleged, that the Eastern States have an interest in dissolving the compact with the Western; as by that