the rest of Europe, by every moral and intellectual association; and capable of being reared up into a prosperous and cultivated state. Finally, in them will perish one whole Christian people; and that the first, that embraced christianity; churches, actually founded by the apostles in person, churches, for whose direct instruction a considerable part of the New Testament was composed, after abiding all the storms of eighteen centuries, and surviving so many vicissitudes, are now at length to be razed; and in the place of all this, an uncivilized Mahometan horde is to be established upon the ruins. We say it is a most momentous alternative. Interest humani generis. The character of the age is concerned. The impending evil is tremendous. To preserve the faith of certain old treaties, concluded we forget when, the parliament of England decides by acclamation to send an army into Portugal and Spain, because Spain has patronized the disaffection of the Portuguese ultra royalists. To prevent a change in the governments of Piedmont, Naples, and Spain, Austria and France invade those countries with large armies. Can these great powers look tamely on, and see the ruin of their Christian brethren consummated in Greece? Is there a faded parchment, in the diplomatic archives of London or Lisbon, that binds the English government more imperiously, than the great original obligation to rescue an entire Christian people from the scimetar? Can statesmen, who profess to be, who are, influenced by the rules of a chaste and lofty public morality, justify their sanguinary wars with Ashantees and Burmans, and find reasons of duty for shaking the petty thrones of the interior of Africa; and allow an African satrap to strew the plains of Attica with bloody ashes?

If they can, and if they will, then let the friends of liberty, humanity, and religion take up this cause, as one that concerns them all, and each, in his capacity as a Christian and a man. Let them make strong the public sentiment on this subject, and it will prevail. Let them remember, what ere now has been done, by the perseverance and resolution of small societies, and even individual men. Let them remember how small a company of adventurers, unpatronized, scarcely tolerated by their government, succeeded in laying the foundations of this our happy country, beyond a mighty ocean. Let them recol

lect, that it was one fixed impression, cherished and pursued in the heart of an humble and friendless mariner, through long

years of fruitless solicitation and fainting hope, to which it is owing, that these vast American continents are made a part of the heritage of civilized man. Let them recollect that, in the same generation, one poor monk dismembered the great ecclesiastical empire of Europe. Let them bear in mind, that it was a hermit, who roused the nations of Europe in mass, to engage in an expedition against the common enemy of Christendom; an expedition, wild, indeed, and unjustifiable, according to our better lights, but lawful and meritorious in those who embarked in it. Let them, in a word, never forget, that when, on those lovely islands and once happy shores, over which a dark cloud of destruction now hangs, the foundations of the christian church were first laid, it was by the hands of private, obscure, and persecuted individuals. It was the people, the humblest of the people, that took up the gospel, in defiance of all the patronage, the power, and the laws of the government. Why should not christianity be sustained, in the same country and by the same means, by which it was originally established? If, as we believe, it is the strong and decided sentiment of the civilized world, that the cause of the Greeks is a good cause, and that they ought not to be allowed to perish, it cannot be, that this sentiment will remain inoperative. The very existence of this sentiment is a tower of strength. It will make itself felt, by a thousand manifestations. It will be heard in our senates, and our pulpits; it will be echoed from our firesides. Does any one doubt that the cause of America was mightily strengthened and animated by the voices of the friends of liberty in the British parliament? Were not the speeches of Chatham and Burke worth a triumphant battle to our fathers? And can any one doubt that the Grecian patriots will hold out, so long as the Christian world will cheer them with its sanction? Let then the public mind be disabused of the prejudices, which mislead it on this question. Let it not be operated upon by tales of piracies at sea, and factions on land; evils, which belong not to Greeks, but to human nature. Let the means of propagating authentic intelligence of the progress of the revolution be multiplied. Let its well wishers and its well hopers declare themselves in the cause. Let the tide of pious and Christian charity be turned into this broad and thirsty channel. Let every ardent and high spirited young man, who has an independent subsistence of two or three hundred dollars a year, embark personally in the cause, and aspire to that crown of glory, never

yet worn except by him, who so lately triumphed in the hearts of the entire millions of Americans. Let this be done, and Greece is safe.

ART. III.-Proceedings of sundry Citizens of Baltimore, convened for the Purpose of Devising the most efficient Means of Improving the Intercourse between that City and the Western States. 8vo. pp. 38. Baltimore. William Wooddy. 1827.

THE fertile districts lying west of the Allegany ridge, and watered by the Ohio and the Mississippi, are among the most remarkable in the world, not so much merely from their great physical advantages, as from the rapidity with which these have been turned to account. In little more than half a century, the frontier of the Anglo-American population has been extended from Cumberland, in Maryland, on the Potomac, to a considerable distance beyond the Mississippi. The state of Ohio, whose nearest point to Cumberland is about one hundred and twenty miles, now numbers more than double the population of Maryland, whose western extremity bordered, in 1760, on a solitary wilderness. One can hardly conjecture how far this torrent of civilization will rush in the next half century. The same fertility of soil, mildness of climate, and facility of interior communication; the same equal laws, and security of property, will probably people the remote west with as great, perhaps greater rapidity. Whatever satisfaction the transatlantic critics may find in the retrospections inspired by their venerable abbeys, there is, to our indigenous taste, something still more inspiring in the anticipations suggested by the fertile solitudes of our own country. What renders the emotion more grateful still, is the cause of this rapid expansion of wealth and civilization. There are countries, perhaps, which excel a part of the regions we speak of, in fertility, and in the value of their products; but none whose progress is to be compared to theirs; a superiority which finds its source in the moral and political condition of their people.

It is difficult to imagine how much greater this progress would have been, had our western states lain more convenient

to the sea. From the physical features of the country, they have from the first, contended with the disadvantage of dealing with remote marts, accessible only at the expense of much time and money. The great chain of the Allegany, which has been called the backbone of the United States, dividing the tributary streams of the Ohio and Mississippi from those of the Atlantic rivers, neither affords a natural descending navigation from the western states to the Atlantic, nor has yet been pierced by a canal uniting their respective waters. The people of the west have depended, for the sale of their surplus produce, on the distant and otherwise disadvantageous market of New Orleans, or have reached the great towns on the seaboard by slow and difficult mountain roads, not always improved by Until the noble invention of Fulton doubled, as it were, the value of our mighty western rivers, the difficulty and delay of their navigation brought the larger part of the commerce of the west over these mountain barriers; and it was this trade, combined with the then great demand for our produce, and with our advantages as neutrals, which gave to some of our Atlantic towns their remarkable growth.

art.

Among these, Baltimore, until the late immense increase of New York, was the most signal example of the sudden concentration of population and wealth in the towns of a new and fast peopling country. A hamlet in 1752, it had in 1820, acquired a population of nearly sixtythree thousand souls, and possessed most of the conveniences and embellishments which belong to cities of the second class. At that period, too, we have reason to believe, its numbers fell short of those of preceding years. The general embarrassments of trade, together with some peculiar causes, had already sensibly lessened its prosperity, and caused a considerable emigration. Its trade has since been revived in most branches, and its capital largely and profitably invested in others; and its population, though no recent census has been taken, may be safely assumed at seventytwo thousand.

Though this check to its prosperity is imputable, in great part, to the causes, which have depressed the whole commercial public, it is referrible, in some degree, to two, whose general effect has been highly advantageous. The introduction of steamboats on the Ohio and the Mississippi, has diminished the transport of country produce across the mountains; and, on the other hand, the western canal of New York has opened

another, and to many districts, a much more convenient conveyance of both the exports and imports of the west. The combined causes of the distance of a market, and of the cheapness of subsistence, have extended a good deal the use of domestic manufactures in the western states, to the partial exclusion of British fabrics; and various causes which we need not mention, have concentrated the trade in these fabrics almost wholly in New York, where it is done largely on foreign account, and through foreign agencies. What is not wholly without effect, the facility of travelling is so much greater than formerly, that the western dealer finds little difference, in expense or fatigue, between going to Baltimore and a little further to New York, and naturally prefers to purchase in the most extensive mart. From these causes, the importation of British goods is much diminished in the former city. On the whole, though the position of Baltimore on a noble bay, sufficient of itself to supply trade to an important town; though the large water power in her vicinity, already extensively applied to mills and factories; her large commerce with the Susquehanna country, four fifths of whose produce seek a market in her harbor; the great capital accumulated by former enterprise, as well as a respectable foreign trade remaining; though all these have combined to bring together, and will continue to support a large and increasing population, it is certain that, since 1818-19, she has taken much less vigorous strides than signalized her earlier career.

We have been led to these remarks by the publication named at the head of this article, from which, and from the steps since taken in conformity with the opinions expressed in it, we learn that an important enterprise is on foot in that city, very likely, in the judgment of the projectors, to succeed, and certain in ours, if successful, to restore to it all the advantages, which it formerly derived from its proximity to the west, and

even more.

The importance of a canal communication with the states beyond the Alleganies, early attracted the attention of Washington, who fixed his view on the Potomac, as offering the shortest and most practicable route. Under his auspices was formed the Potomac Company,' and a canal commenced, which was never completed. The project was resumed in 1822, by the states of Virginia and Maryland, in connexion with the general government, and the public is informed of the surveys