d



  Suppose the objectors to rail roads and land transportation, calcu-
late the average losses upon the Mississippi and its tributaries in
steam boats and other craft yearly, and when they have done so, com-
pare such losses to the losses on rail roads throughout the world, they
will find to their surprise, a bloody and tremendous account of it-
they will find that more lives and property were lost on the Ben She-
rod or Tennessee alone, than has been lost upon the face of the globe
from rail roads since their use. And to this consideration they should
add a frightful list of deaths arising from diseases contracted from
navigating our waters. Since our own enterprising citizens first
tempted the market of New Orleans, the river and its markets have
been literally the graves of our people. It is a market fraught
with all the perils of life and property, that any market upon earth is.
  Our trade to the south over land is three fold in value the amount
of what we take by water,-and to take our stock, c. to market re-
quires a larger proportion of hands according to the amount in value
taken to market, than is required to take the same amount of our pro-
duce to market on the river, yet there is believed to be a greater a-
mount of the loss of lives from the perils of the rivers and steam
boats, and diseases in one year among our traders in the river trade,
than has arisen from our whole trade by land, since our citizens drove
the first horse to the Charleston market. When this fact is known
to all, ought a wise people to perish and wither their enterprise and
trade by land, and give exclusive encouragement and protection to
that on the water Surely not. But as I have said, let it net be un-
derstoood that I would discourage the river trade or in the least ad-
vise its discontinuance-very different. I believe commerce is the
spirit of labor and civilization, and that a virtuous people should en-
courage and protect it. But commerce, like every other branch ef
business, should be managed with prudence and foresight, and be ever
under the guidance of wise policy, and not left to chance and hazard
alene. Yet, was the question propounded to me which trade to yield,
that of the rivers or of the land, I am ready at once to decide. While
on the one hand I admit the value of our river trade, on the ether
I consider our intercourse with the south over land, invaluable and in-
dispensable to us-so much so, that without it we would in our ruin-
ous trade elsewhere become bankrupt in a twelve month. I have not
time nor inclination to dilate in a contrast upon the subject of our inter-
course with the countries on the Mississippi and those on the Atlntic