In this respect, however, none of them will be worthy of comparison with this newly discovered river, if the point of its confluence with the ocean should happily be where it is conjectured.  And yet we find that all the countries through which the above-named rivers pass, either have been, or promise to be, the seats of much more wealthy and powerful nations than the countries through which those rivers pass whose course is east or west.  The cause of this superiority of one over the other, is to be traced to the greater diversity of productions, which will necessarily be raised on the banks and in the vicinity of those rivers whose course is north or south, a circumstance that is alone sufficient to ensure the possessors of them, under Governments equally favourable to the extension of industry, a much greater share of commerce and wealth than can possibly belong to the inhabitants of these rivers whose course is in a contrary direction:  and this for the simplest reason; because rivers of the former description contain within themselves, many of those productions which the latter can only obtain from abroad.  In the one, therefore, there is not only a necessity for having recourse to foreign supply, which does not exist in the other, but also a great prevention to internal navigation, arising from the sameness of produce, and the consequent impediment to barter, which must prevail in a country where all have the same commodities to dispose of, where all wish to sell and none to buy.  To this manifest superiority which rivers runningon a meridian claim over those running on a parallel, there is no counterpoise, since they both contain equal facilities for exporting their surplus productions, and receiving in exchange the superfluities of other countries.  It may, indeed, here be urged, that there is, upon the whole, no surplus produce in the world; and that, as the surplus, whatever may be its extent, of one country, may be always exchanged for that of another, as great a variety of luxuries may be thus obtained by the inhabitants of rivers that run in an eastern or western direction as can possibly be raised by the inhabitants of rivers that run in a northern or southern; and that consequently the same stimulus to an inland navigation will be created by the eventual distribution of the various commodities procured by foreign commerce, as if they had been the products of the country itself.  To this it may be replied, that although a much greater variety of products may undoubtedly be imported from foreign countries, than can possibly be raised within the compass of any one navigable river, such products cannot afterwards be sold at so cheap a rate.  In all countries, therefore, where such products are imported from abroad, the increase in their price must occasion a proportionate diminution in their consumption, and in so far inevitably operate as a check to internal navigation.