and the Thames was crowded with shipping which belonged to states
that the emperor supposed to be under his control.

{abortive policy = in the early years of the 19th century the
French Emperor Napoleon had sought, largely unsuccessfully, to
blockade England from trade with Europe}

As to the notion of there arising any rival ports, south, to
compete with New York, it strikes us as a chimera. New Orleans
will always maintain a qualified competition with every place not
washed by the waters of the great valley; but New Orleans is
nothing but a local port, after all--of great wealth and
importance, beyond a doubt, but not the mart of America.

New York is essentially national in interests, position, and
pursuits. No one thinks of the place as belonging to a particular
State, but to the United States. The revenue paid into the
treasury, at this point, comes in reality, from the pockets of
the whole country, and belongs to the whole country. The same is
true of her sales and their proceeds. Indeed, there is very
little political sympathy between the places at the mouth of the
Hudson, and the interior--the vulgar prejudice of envy, and the
jealousy of the power of collected capital, causing the country
to distrust the town.

We are aware that the governing motive of commerce, all over the
world, is the love of gain. It differs from the love of gain in
its lower aspects, merely in its greater importance and its
greater activity. These cause it to be more engrossing among
merchants than among the tillers of the soil: still, facts prove