The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-18 00:00:00

MARKETS—This Day.

MARK-LANE.
The supply of English wheat received fresh up to Mark-
lane to-day was very moderate. The demand, however,
ruled inactive at Monday's decline of Is. per qr. The show
of foreign wheat on the stands was large. For all descrip-
tions the trade was in a sluggish state, yet no quotable
change took place in the rates current at the commence-
ment of the week. Floating cargoes of grain were in slow
request at late rates. The supply of barley was very mode-
rate. Malting qualities realised fully previous quotations.
Grinding and distillery sorts were steady. A fair average
business was transacted in malt at late rates. The supply
of oats on sale was very large. The trade for all qualities
ruled heavy, and prices were barely supported. Beans and
peas were in steady request, and prices ruled firm. No
change took place either in the value of English or foreign
tour; but the amount of business transacted was very
moderate.

ARRIVALS THIS WEEK.
%Vbeat IsarleY. Malt. Oats. Flour.
850 I 420 1 1,690
I 810
1ri5h.......... — 7OO
ie0raign......10,380 4,1110 56,5(30 20 eke.
220 brie.

) LEADENHALL.
le is moderate; on the whole,
ull quotations.
the carcase.

adad
Middlingmutton 3 10 4 2
Prime .. 4 4 4 6
Veal
Small pork
Lamb

TH E WESTERN STATES.

(Front tha- ;Special Correspondent of the Times.)
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, Sept. 2.

It does not -take many days' residence at Chicago
to make a tray eller aware that he has reached the
vsry heart of American life. The valley of the
Mississippi is a great bread basket, and so long as
man lives by bread it will have a great ascendancy
over the destinies, not merely of this continent, but
of the world at large. The Americans are very fond
of pointing to their " glorious institutions," or else
to their stirring, thrifty, mettlesome race, for the
rapid growth of their communities, and the rise of
their colossal p ower. The fact, is, however, that
there are here material advantages sufficient to
account for any phenomenon of great and sudden
social increase. The wealth and prosperity are of
nature's own making, and the Anglo-Saxon tribe
has achieved here no greater prodigies than such
as, under the same circumstances, would be exhi-
bited by any other human family.

In the early part of the present century this cen-
tral region of the American continent was hardly
explored, yet the rich soil of the western divisions
of the Atlantic States, and the as yet unsettled ter-
ritories of Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee held out
the strongest inducement to immigrant enterprise,
and the 'West—the far West—was looked upon as the
common refuge, no less than the common storehouse,
of mankind. Those territories became States, new
ones were added, the great west receded further and
further still, till the whole of the great valley was,
if not actually colonised, at least meted out
and apportioned into various lots, to which the
world was freely invited to help itself. Ohio,
Tennessee, and Kentucky are now old settle-
ments—indeed, the inhabitants of the latter
State are never so happy as when they can
designate their country as " Old Kentuck."
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, have sprung up within
a score of years, and count their people by millions.
The new fledglings are now lowa, Wisconsin, Mis•
riessota ; then will come the turn of Kansas, Ne-
braska, Dacotah ; not to push our observations
beyond our limits, and to say nothing of the regions
'lying to the west of the Rocky Mountains.
The valley of the Mississippi, with all its tribu-
taries, makes up an area of 1,210,000 square miles.
All of it is not Eden, certainly, but there is no
doubt as to the health and wealth, the vastness and
inexhaustibleness of these north-western districts.
" The soil on the river bottoms of Illinois is often
25 or 30 feet deep, and the upper prairie districts
are hardly less productive. Forty bushels of wheat
or 100 bushels of Indian corn to the acre is a com-
mon product here." In West Virginia, Kentucky,
Ohio, or Tennessee the colonist was at least at the
trouble to clear the ground, and wage war to the
&.l-encumbering fores:s ; but in these more western
districts man's work has been most carefully and
providentially done by nature. "These prairies,"
Says a writer whose words I would not quote if I
could substitute anything more graphic and im-

presaive :
" These boundless prairies seem as if they hal been cleared
by the patient labour of another race of men, removing all
the forests, and stumps, and brambles, and smoothing them
down as if with mighty rollers, and sowing them with grass
and flowers ; a race which then passed away, having built
no houses of their own, and made no fences, and set out no
trees, and established no landmarks, to lay the foundation of
any future claim. You ascend the Mississippi amid scenery
unsurpassed in beauty probably in the world. You see
the waters making their way along an interval of from
two to four miles In width, between bluffs of from 100
to 6'oo feet in height. Now the river makes its way
along the eastern range of bluffs, and now the western
and now in the centre, and now it divides itself into nume-
rous channels, forming thousands of beautiful islands,
covered with long grass ready for the aithe of the mower.
Mese bluffs, rounded with taste and skill, such as could be
imitated by no art of man, and set oat with trees here and
there gracefully arranged like orchards, seem to have been
sown with grain to the summit, and are clothed with beau-
tiful green. You look out instinctively for the house and
barn, for flocks and herds, for men and women and chil-
dren, but they are not there. A race that is gone seems to
have cultivated those fields, and then to have silently dis-
appeared, leaving them for the first man that should come
from the older parts of our own country. or from foreign
lands. to take possession of thorn. It is only by a process
of reflection that you are convinced that it is not so. But
it is not the work of man. It is God who has done it,
when there was no man there save the wandering savage,
alike ignorant and unconcerned as to the design of the great
processes in the land where ho roamed. God who did all
this, that he might prepare it for the abode of a cividsed
and Christian people."

It is not merely as a pretty picture that I have
laid the above striking extract before the reader.
It is because it bears me out in my conviction that
American progress is mainly owing to material
causes. The growth of Illinois, from 12,288 inhabi
tants in 1810 to 1,711,9 M in 1860, showing an in-
crease of 101.03 per 100, exceeds all previous re-
sults obtained in other States, chiefly, if not alto-
gether, owing to the fact that the tide of immigra-
tion, after struggling for years against the difficul-
ties of mere forest regions, was able to expand un-
trammelled over the open prairies. These advan-
tages of Illinois ale equally extended to lowa,
Wisconsin, and to the vaster zones of the Mine-
sots, Nebraska, and Dacotah territories. Talk about
the activity of the American branch of the Anglo-
Saxon race! why, the invading tide comes in just
now as strong from Germany and Scandinavia as
from the States themselves. It is Providence has
laid out these magnificent regions for the whole of
mankind, and it is very questionable whether De-
mocratic or any other institutions ever did or ever
will rather help than retard the spontaneous work
of colonisation.

However it may be, the bread basket is half-full,
the Mississippi ♦alley is settled as far at least as the
current of the main river itself, and the produce of
this western region is so portentously great as not
only to constitute the main wealth of the American
Union, but to render the prosperity of all the other
States, the whole social and political movement of
the commonwealth, in a great measure subservient
to its interests and exigencies.
The Atlantic States are to the Great West merely
in the light of fetchers and carriers. Those who
hate in their hands the bread basket are entitled to
the choice of the means by which its contents shall
spread through the world. I have had occasion to
say before this that the main natural outlets for the
agricultural wealth of the West are three—the
Mississippi river at the south, the great lakes, and
the St. Lawrence in the north, and the railway and
canal lines through New York State down to the
Hudson river in the east.

Chicago con hardly be said to lie in the Mississippi
valley. Its watershed slopes down to the lake
region, but it has a point of contact with the
southern waters by the means of the Michigan and
Illinois canal, a hydraulic work about 90 miles in
length, which from this city to La Salle or Peru
establishes, communication between Like Michigan
and the Illinois river, and through this latter with
the great Mississippi stream. The great object of
the Chicago people is now to convert it into a great
ship canal. All round the city from which. I am now
writing no less than 17 railway lines spread out as
far as St. Joseph, Des Moines and Council Bluffs,
Galena, Dubuque, Cedar Falls, and Fort Dodge,
Prairie-du-Chien, Milwaukle, La Crosse, and St.
N Paul, into Kansas, lowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and
Mineseta, into the whole north- western district.
Chicago is the great centre of western commerce,
and when its treasures are accumulated inits ware
houses and wharfs, the great question arises how
they can be best disposed of. One of the great chan-
nels of export lies along the line of the lakes Michi-
gan and Huron, St. Clair river and lake, and hence
through the pass of Detroit into Lake Erie, out of
which the British canal Welland opens into Lake
Ontario, and from this again through the canal and
river of St. Lawrence, finds an outlet into the At-
lantic to Europe. Another line of water communica-
tion, going equally through the lakes of Michigan,
and St. Clair into Lake Erie, proceeds through
the Erie Canal from Buff.io to Albany, and hence
down the beautiful Hudson river to New York.
There can be doubt as to which of these two routes is
better suited to the western trade. The industry and
magnificence of the British Government have made
the Canada line so convenient that vessels of 400 co
590 tons have already wilted all the way frcm Chi-
cago to Liverpool, and vice versa. But the jealousy
and cupidity of the New York merchants, on whose
good pleasure these Western producers are, owing to
their poverty, to a great extent dependent, have had
the tendency to give their narrow sod crooked lines

the advantage, and the whole system of New York
and Pennsylvania railway and canal companies have
of late been greatly enriched 'at the expen e of the
true interests no less of the West than of the com-
merce of the whole world. It is computed that
while:the freight of a bushel of corn from Chicago to
Liverpool by the Canada line only comes to 49c.,
the freight of the same merchandise from Chicago to
Liverpool by the New York line costs no less than
540. The length of the voyage by the first line and
by sailing vessels is only 20 to 22 days ; by the
other route it is 35 to 40 days.
It is found, moreover, that both the St. Lawrence
and the Hudson River lines are sadly inadequate to
the wants of the Western trade ; and I have heard
Western men, both at Cincinnati and -here, com-
plain that the interruption of the Mississippi trade
consequent upon the civil war had occasioned an
obstruction in their exports that all the activity of
the Northern and Western lines could not remove.
I have been told that whole mountains of Western
corn and meat were kept waiting for weeks and
months at the wharves of the canals and at the rail-
way stations at Erie and Buffalo, waiting for an out
let through the overtasked means of communication
on the New York lines. There is no end, also, to
the complaint of these Westerners as to the extor-
tion, ill-faith, and downright knavery of those New
York companies; and I know of one instance of a
merchant whose corn, which was valued at 75c. per
bushel at Chicago, was sold at 74c. per bushel at
New York—a phenomenon for which he was at a
loss to account, until he found oat by inquiry that
the rogues at the Buffalo elevators had substituted
their own third-rate stuff instead of the prime article
which he had intrusted to their conveyance.
The imperfect, insufficient,
and " over-sharp"
means of communication which were opened in
New York for the exportation of Western pro-
duce, madethewa war which
eedr n ers not
their
natural
tlui trtal
le ferue
outlet
ifeutl at
tf
he Westerners not a little fretful at
the war whic!i c leosst
the Mississippi against them; the civil war
was beginning to put their patience to the severest
test; and had the fall of Vicksburg and Port
Hudson been put off for five or six months
longer it is difficult to say to what desperate reso-
lution the closing of the Mississippi might not have
driven the great West, notwithstanding the large
demands for provisions occasioned by the wasteful
war and the very brisk market opened for Western
corn and meat for home consumption. Vicksburg
and Port Hudson are fallen, and steamers are now
plying with tolerable safety along the Mississippi.
But these people enjoyed a market no less than a
way of transit for their goods in the South, and the
condition of the Southern States is still such as to
give little hope for the speedy restoration of busi-
ness in those quarters. I have a private letter from
New Orleans before me, the tone of which is any thing
but cheering for Western intereats, and es it comes
from Republican sources, it is less liable to the im-
putation of unfair spirit or wilful exaggeration.
" After a voyage of discovery," it says,—
"We find all business, except Government business,
very dull. There are no strangers at the hotels, as there
used to be; there is no produce on the levee or in store;
there is no money, and trade cannot be resumed to any
great extent for a long time. There are none lett to buy.
The place now is scarce larger than Chicago. Many of the
wealthy are gone ; the poor have been compelled to seek
bread elsewhere. There is no labour to be done, no com-
merce to employ. None of the resources of the past are
fruitful now. The system of labour heretefore used on the
plantation has been swept away and none other substituted •
in its place. The rebels have taken most of the ablebodied
negro men, and we the rest; and only women are now left
to do the labour. It will take years to rtgulate these
matters and recover our prosperity. All things are done,
seemingly, that can be done, to make it onerous to the citi-
zen, unpleasant to the visitor, and unprofitable to the specu-
lator—particularly is this true of all people and things that
come down the river. There has been a settled policy
against the 'West, though we win all the battles that are
won, supply immense material of war in men and food;
have been robbed by our friends : still we suffer impositions
that no other people would bear, . . . There is no dis-
tinction made between the loyal and disloyal who arrive
here by river. One party had to take the oath of allegi-
ance before they could land oven."
And again, further,— 1
" Of business there is none, except a very small retail
trade. No cotton on the levee, no sugar or molasses, all as
clean as a parade ground. But few ships, no steamers, only
one or two men-of-war. What a change! This movement
was to enrich the South, and place her the brightest, richest
gem in the crown of nations. This is a city petrified, a
monument of fallen pride.. 'I he country around is much
of it an unfenced desert. Only a few wholesale houses are
open, and these by citizens of another State. You pass
down street after street with not a store open, nor even " to
let." The people can buy nothing, for they have no money.
It this river were opened there would not be much business,
from the fact that there is nothing to exchange for produce.
I Foreign vessels do not come now to deal. They go to New
York for the things that they formerly formerly found
here. The trade with Cuba and the West Indies, with
South America and the Pectic Isles, used to be heavy. One
might see at Honololu the products of our section, shipped
from New Orleans, On the quay of Valparaiso one could
see canvassed meat from Chicago and Cincinnati, via New
Orleans. All these things have changed. Illinois and the
contiguous States are deeply interested in this matter, and
should give seine counsel and aid in bettering the condition
of things,"

I do not know how all this will strike you, but to
me it seems rather significant. The rulers at Wash-
ington seem determined to turn the South into a
wilderness, and they do not or will not see, that by
punishing the guilty South, they no less strike the
innocent West. There is no very loud complaint in
this latter quarter at the present moment, for the
war absorbs all its produce, and the army is its best
of markets. But the war must come to an end, and
who is to make up to the West for the loss of its
trade with the Southern States? The extermination
of those slave communities may suit the trading
cupidity, no less than the zealous humanitarianism
of New York or Philadelphia, but the West is the
arbiter of American destinies, and it will hardly
suit her to submit to Eastern monopoly, and to be
deprived of the best means of disposing of her com •
modities. At a moment in which the natural tide
of immigration and the tilling of new lands promise
to give a new impulse to Western produce, it is
hard to think that one of the most active channels
for its exportation, one of the most opportune mar-
kets for its consumption, has ceased to be. These
will be serious considerations for the West as soon
as the excitement for the war and the cry of the
" Union at any price" have time to subside. The
subjugation of the South may be a desideratum, but
its desolation and extinction is a calamity which
may have consequences upon districts in which
slavery and rebellion were never heard of.
A strange feeling it is, taken altogether, which
animates these Western people against the trading
population of the Atlantic States. Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, and all the North West, were mainly colo-
nized by New Englanders. The Yankees here are
still very numerous, and even more powerful.
Banking houses, insurance companies, railways,
canals, every useful enterprise, is almost exclusively
in their bands. They have the law, the magistra-
ture;inthdey aro the politicians,
and heart, the salt of
theschoolmasters,
otnhtero
ml
the community. Their connexions with their
Eastern homes are knit with the strongest ties.
'The capital in circulation in the West is mainly
Eastern capital, and the great commercial potentates
here are merely the agents and representatives of
great New York and Boston houses. Yet the West
is not the East ; not like the East, it likes not the
East. The people here are apt to complain of that
Eastern sharpness which overreaches them in every
bargain. Tney fret at the compulsion they labour
under, to buy Eastern manufactures at Eastern
prices—viz., on such terms as the East imposes.
They declare that the cost of every article at Chicago
IS double what it would be at New York. Even the
Yankee community in the *West is dissatisfied with
Yankee smartness ; but there is in the West another
community different from the Yankee community,
and this consists of those millions of Irish, German,
and other immigrants who constitute the great bulk
of the Western population. The men of the upper
classes here, the rulers of the people, are New Eng-
landers ; but the people at large are that mixture of
all races which is crowding this continent with a
new nation, a new nation in which the Anglo-Saxon
blood has ceased to be the chief ingredient. With
this hard-working, stirring, aspiring mass even its
Yankee leaders are fain to sympathise. The New
Eaglander is shrewd and accommodating. In the
South the settler from the North east always
proved to be the most ruthless, uncompromising
slaveowner. In the West the Yankee must learn to
uphold th,:, lute-
westernise, to adopt the vieWEI to