Page:Reflections, on the Cession of Louisiana to the United States.pdf/16

 remained in that state, but for this event, which has put the market completely in our own hands; and it will be our own faults if we do not avail ourselves of the benefit, which wisdom, discretion, and foresight are capable of deriving from so fortunate a circumstance.

Seventhly; a still more important consideration, inseparably connected with the last, is, that it secures us against the danger of depopulation, by migrations from these states to Louisiana; and furnishes us with the means of regulating our own population; besides giving us the exclusive benefit of emigrations from Europe.

Both these may be deemed objects of the first importance; if France had retained the possession of Louisiana, nothing is more likely, than that she would have adopted every measure for the promotion of that colony, which her well known skill in policy could have suggested. None was more obvious than offering to emigrants bounties in lands, and other advantageous terms of settlement, sufficiently captivating to allure many of the citizens of the United States to remove thither. Success in such a scheme would operate doubly to our disadvantage, since we should lose a citizen whenever they gained a new settler. A few years might have transferred the whole population on the east of the Mississippi to the western side of that river; for, those whom the spirit of adventure, or the desire of bettering their fortunes, might prompt to remove from the Atlantic to the transmontane states, would probably no longer stop there, but cross the Mississippi at once, in quest of better lands, or more advantageous terms of purchase, or of settlement. Emigrants from Europe would also have been probably tempted to look for settlements in this new land of promise, for the same alluring and substantial reasons. Thus not only the disposal of our public lands, but our population, itself, would have been at the mercy of the French government. It