with New York and Philadelphia; our trade on the Atlantic has been
and must continue to be most ruinous. It is to that trade that we owe
our continual indebtedness; by it our labor is consumed, and through
it annually our people are forced to sell their lands, and migrate
West, where, (out of what they save of the prices of their lands here,
sold to pay Eastern debts,) they can buy cheap lands."
   Our trade to New Orleans, though less unequal in its exchanges,
has always been a disastrous one, to those long engageg in it.
ThQusands lose their lives from exposure to the climate and dangers
of the rivers, and scarcely a man exists, engaged in carrying out the
products of our soil, by way of the Mississippi, for twenty years, that
has not come out in the end worse than when he entered into the
trade, and certainly a large majority of those engaged in the trade
have become totally bankrupt. From this remark ,I except negro
traders (of course.) Indeed, for a series of years past, the New Or-
leans market has produced to the people of the State of Kentucky,
no profit-on the contrary, large balances are believed _to have been
created against us, for the cottons and sugars, c. c. purehased in
that market. I have no statistical account of the value of our pro-
ducts sold in New Orleans, and of those bought there by our traders,
but my own observation enables me to say that those we buy greatly
exceed in value those we sell. Our grain and whiskey sold in that
market are known to have greatly diminished within a few years.
In fact, our whole trade in products, except in hemp and tobacco, a-
mounts to but little, nor do those articles amount to a great deaL But
a few counties in the Green river country, now send tobacco to New
Orleans, and every hogshead from every other part of the State
either sent to New Orleans or elsewhere, is scarcely worth naming;
while our whole trade in hemp is only from a few, counties, chiefly on
-the north side of the Kentucky. Why is this the case, I am asked,
when Kentucky once engrossed the almost entire produce market on
the Mississippi I answer, because the labor of the States of Ohio,
Indiana, Dlliaois, Missouri and Tennessee has measurably crowded
out our produce and manufactures, from the markets of the Missis-
sippi, with the exception of tobacco, cotton-bagging and bale-rope;
and the day is not distant when in these articles the States west of
the Ohio, are to command those markets in the articles of bale-rope
and bagging. To prove the truth of these remarks, we have only to
take as a sample the article of salted pork, for the winter of 1837-8.