in the long course of sixty years, has been transferred from South to North.  There are no data by which it can be estimated with any certainty; but it is safe to say that it amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars.  Under the most moderate estimate, it would be sufficient to add greatly to the wealth of the North, and thus greatly increase her population by attracting emigration from all quarters to that section.

This, combined with the great primary cause, amply explains why the North has acquired a preponderance in every department of the Government by its disproportionate increase of population and States.  The former, as has been shown, has increased, in fifty years, 2,400,000 over that of the South.  This increase of population, during so long a period, is satisfactorily accounted for, by the number of emigrants, and the increase of their descendants, which have been attracted to the northern section from Europe and the South, in consequence of the advantages derived from the causes assigned.  If they had not existed—­if the South had retained all the capital which had been extracted from her by the fiscal action of the Government; and, if it had not been excluded by the ordinance of 1787 and the Missouri compromise, from the region lying between the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers, and between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains north of 36 deg. 30’—­it scarcely admits of a doubt, that it would have divided the emigration with the North, and by retaining her own people, would have at least equalled the North in population under the census of 1840, and probably under that about to be taken.  She would also, if she had retained her equal rights in those territories, have maintained an equality in the number of States with the North, and have preserved the equilibrium between the two sections that existed at the commencement of the Government.  The loss, then, of the equilibrium is to be attributed to the action of this Government.

But while these measures were destroying the equilibrium between the two sections, the action of the Government was leading to a radical change in its character, by concentrating all the power of the system in itself.  The occasion will not permit me to trace the measures by which this great change has been consummated.  If it did, it would not be difficult to show that the process commenced at an early period of the Government; and that it proceeded, almost without interruption, step by step, until it virtually absorbed its entire powers; but without going through the whole process to establish the fact, it may be done satisfactorily by a very short statement.