Page:Reflections, on the Cession of Louisiana to the United States.pdf/4

 For wealth does not consist in the possession of lands, unless we have also the means of cultivating them, and of obtaining a ready and convenient market for all our superfluities: Without these, the borders of the Nile are of no more value than the sands of Africa; population, only, can furnish them: Consequently to a people already possessing a superabundance of land, the acquisition of as much more, without any increase of population, offers no present advantage; on the contrary it would rather serve to depreciate that which they already possess; and, what is worse, may operate to diminish the national strength, by dispersing the people over an immense wilderness, instead of drawing them together, as closely as may be consistent with the fertility of our lands, and other natural advantages; a measure which sound policy will always recommend in all countries.

The re-cession of Louisiana by Spain to France, a few years past, was a measure dictated probably by constraint, rather than by choice. For it seems difficult to conceive what benefit the former could promise to herself from it; and it is equally difficult to imagine that she could not foresee the danger to be apprehended from a flourishing colony established so near to her weak and rich possessions in Mexico: to the final conquest of which such an acquisition by an ambitious, powerful, and warlike nation would seem to be almost an immediate step. And such a purchase by a government of that character, possessing at the time no other territory on the North American continent, might be considered as an indication of views by no means favourable to those already established in the neighbourhood; and which it would not very readily be brought to abandon.

The proposed establishment of a military colony in Louisiana by the French government, under such circumstances was therefore a subject of serious alarm, not only to our western brethren, but to