which prove to be, as is his settlement generally, the worst land in Illinois. Nobody now cares to buy of, or settle down, with either him or Flower. I like Flower the least; I would prefer Birkbeck for a neighbour, dressed up, as he is, in a little mean chip hat, and coarse domestic clothes from Harmony, living in a little log-house, smoking segars, and drinking bad whiskey, just as I found him, rough as he was. Mr. G. Flower is inducing mechanics to come from all parts to settle, although there is no employment for them, nor any market now, nor in future, at New Orleans or elsewhere, for produce, unless a war comes, which may require America to supply other nations in want. Sometimes I think Birkbeck is right. But still I think that both he and Flower will get rid of all their dollars, and never raise more; dollars and they will part for ever. They {196} will live, but not as they did, and might have lived in England or in the eastern states. Labour costs more than double what it does in the east. The west is fit only for poor men, who are the only proper pioneers of the wilderness. I do not believe that land will improve in value, but that much money will be wasted in improvements. Slavery, sir, is not so bad as we thought it to be, provided the slaves are not hired out like pack-horses, but kept by their own proper owners. They would then be gentlemen-servants. You know that we never prize a pack-horse, nor treat it so kindly as one of our own."
22nd.—After breakfast this morning I visited the seat and pleasure-grounds of Mr. Speaker Clay,[60] who concluded the peace of Ghent, now gone to his chair in Con-*
