Page:Journal of the Sixth Legislative Council of the Territory of Michigan.djvu/148

136 with this subject, which I did not think it proper to advert to in my communication to Governor Brown, intending in that communication to confine myself to the mere right of the question. They are topics, I mean, of expediency and national policy. Under the patronage and paternal care of the general government, Ohio has grown rapidly from the condition of helpless infancy. She has suddenly swollen to the dimensions of a giant; already she reckons among her children, more than half a million—her collossal stature overshadows the whole west; yet nearly half her Territory remains a wilderness. Is it politic in a national point of view, then— is it expedient, to increase that disparity which already exists between her and the neighboring States?

Would this be right under any circumstances, but more especially at the expense of this remote, isolated, feeble and frontier Territory?

If it be desirable that any state rather than another should have the control of powerful and extensive resources, moral and physical, is it not peculiarly so in regard to a state such as this must be; remote from the strength of this nation, cut off from it by an almost impassable morass, and exposed as it certainly is to the rapidly increasing political power of the country opposite to us, the most fertile and most beautiful part of Upper Canada, and to the countless hordes of savages in the North-West? Great as may be considered the commercial and natural advantages of this Territory, the number of emigrants is perhaps comparatively small, who may find in latitudes so high inducements to settle among us. The limits of the future State of Michigan ought not probably to comprehend any country much beyond the limits of the peninsula of Michigan itself; an acre of country to the south and within those limits, is of more value to us than miles to the north and beyond them.

A considerable part of the country claimed by Ohio, is the finest we have; to be deprived of it would materially affect the period of our admission into the Union, of our participation in the blessings of self-government. Besides the topography of the country would show, that such a dismemberment would violate manifest political propriety. The Black Swamp forms the natural and proper Barrier of Ohio; to the north-west of it, she can have but little to interest her; whereas to this Territory the Miami Bay furnishes her only harbor on Lake Erie. The commercial connexions of the people inhabiting its southern shores, the only shores which by reason of the Black Swamp are for the present habitable, are and must be with this Territory; their true interests require also that their political connexions should be here.

I hope it may not be considered superfluous in me to submit to you, Sir, these extrinsic and collateral observations. Should the