By recent letters from America we learn, that the Congress of the nited States, after warm debates in both Houses, particularly in that of the Representatives, passed an act for the purpose of fixing permanently their seat of Government at German Town in Pennsylvania.

The two new provinces in North America, Kentucky and Vermont, whose population already is so very considerable, were formed by the vast numbers of inhabitants who fled from the destruction and ravages of the unhappy contest between Great Britain and her colonies, and though the greatest part of them were then deemed loyalists, yet they have now jooined the American confederation. Seated on the banks of the great river Mississippi, far to the westward of all the other states, they can either navigate northerly to the lakes, or southerly to the Spanish settlements on the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico, and carry on a lucrative trade with the Indians. They are possessed of as fertile a tract of country as any in the world, the position of which they??? also s???d by navigable rivers to Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, and from thence, as their views???tend, to every country in Europe. Thus, from the most distressed situation, to rise to opulence and independence ina few years, must excite admiration.

Agriculture, at present, seems to be the peculiar province of American industry, from whence wealth will flow into every part of that vast country, as it abounds in large tracts of rich land, level grounds, with a deep soil, and extended savannahs; while to the northward the fisheries and shipbuilding amply compensate for the want of an equal fertility; and though not so abundant in coin, yet the provinces produce the finest meadows, form whence a provision trade will be every year increasing. The southern countries of Europe, not affording sufficient crops of grain for the support of their inhabitants, on account of the remarkable encrease of population, and which is still augmenting, as arts and manufacturers are every where extended: America may, therefore, be deemed, in future, the granary of this quarter of the globe.


Citation: Glasgow Advertiser (Glasgow, United Kingdom), 16 August 1790, available at the Scissors and Paste Database, http://www.scissorsandpaste.net/69.