Bradford reporter. [volume] (Towanda, Pa.) 1844-1884, 1855-09-01

continued unequal legislation in Congress, and
increasing expenditures of the government,
chiefly disbursed in the North-and defect of
scamen in the South, (for mariners cannot be
made of slaves all combined to retain the
foreign trade in the channel which had absorb
ed it and to increase it there with the increas-
ing wealth and population of the country, and
the still faster increasing extravaganza and
prUfusion of the government. And now, at
this period, (1S54,) the foreign imports at New
York are 1875 millions /; at Boston SO millions
in Virginia one million and a quarter in South
Carolina one million and three quarters.
This is what the dry naked figures show
to the memory and Imagination it is worse
For It is a tradition of the colonies that the
South has been the seat of wealth and happi-
ness, of power and opulence that a rich
population covered the land, dispensing a
baronial hospitality, and diffusing the felicity
which themselves enjoyed that all was life,
and Joy, and affluence then. And this tradition
was not without similitude to the reality, as
this writer can testify ; for he was old enough
to have seen CATER the Revolution) the still
surviving state of southern colonial manners,
when no traveller was allowed to go to a tavern,
and was handed over from family to family,
through entire states-when holidays were days
of ~festivitv and expectation, long prepared for,
and celebrated by master and slave with music
and ~feasting, and great concOurSe of friends
and relatives when gold was kept in desks or
chests (after the downfall of paper, and weigh
ed in scales, and lent to ~neighbors for short
terms without note, interest, witness or security
and Oh bond and land security for long years
and lawful usance and when petty ligitation
was at so low an ebb that it required a fine of
40 pounds of tobacco to make a man serve as
constable.
The reverse of all this was now seen and felt :;
not to the whole extent which fancy or policy
painted, but to extent enough to constitute a
reverse, and to make a contrast, and to excite
the regrets which the memory of past joys
never fails to awaken. A real change had
come and this change, the effect of many
causes, was wholly attributed to one-the I'M
equal working of the federal government, which
gave all the beDcfits of the Union to the North
and all its burthenS to the South. And that
was the point on which southern discomfort
broke out-on which it openly rested until
1885, when it was shifted to the danger of
slave property.
Separation is no remedy for these evils, but
the parent of far greater than just discomfort
or restless ambition would fly from. To the
South the Union is a political blessing to the
North it is both a political and a pecuniary
blessing to both it should be a social blessing.
Both sections should cherish it, and the North
most. The story of the boy that killed the
goose that laid the golden egg every day, that
he might get all the eggs at once, was a fable !;
but the northern man who could promote separa-
tioa by any course of wrong to the South
would convert that fable into history-his own
history ; and commit a folly, in a mere profit
and loss point of view, of which there is no
precedent except i'll fable.