The settlers along the bottoms, deserted by the steamboats, have sought the railroads, and their ranches are going to ruin. The deer and other wild game, once frightened away by the continual blast of the steam whistle, are now returning to their ancient pasture-grounds. The solitary woodman who in winter gathered his stock of fuel, certain of a market with the returning spring, and the genial tribe of boatmen whom the lively commerce of a quarter of a century reared up along the valley, alike bewail the sudden collapse of their fortunes. The lonely ranchman who still lingers in those parts has ceased to strain his eyes toward the depression in the eastern horizon where the great river runs into the sky, for he no longer sees the curling smoke which tells him that the first boat of spring is near and that the severe monotony of winter is at an end. Original wildness has regained her primeval empire. But for a few deserted huts and still fewer yet occupied, the wrecks of a few abandoned steamboats, the mutilated remains of works by which the government has sought to control the course of the turbulent river-and Lewis and Clarke might say that it was but yesterday they cordelled their boats up these same rapids through the changeless prairies of the undiscovered West.

Fort Benton thus stands, as she has stood since 1887, on an equal footing with other similar towns, the market for a small tract of surrounding country. Of course, her previous great prosperity has given her a present importance which she would probably not have had without it. Her future growth will surely depend upon different agencies than in the past. Many years will elapse before she will again see a thriving river commerce terminate at her levee. Her hope will be in the development of the country along the river; and could the river itself be made to contribute to that development, it would yet prove a greater blessing to Fort Benton than it has in the past. To see that great volume of water flowing down to the ocean while the rich prairie soil is parching in a rainless climate, makes one wish that the government, instead of spending its money to contract the river channel, would rather try to scatter the waters upon the adjoining lands. By a strange misapplication of terms, streams are often said to water the valleys through which they flow, as if the exact opposite were not generally the case. But what greater boon could be conferred upon the Missouri valley than to make this misapplied expression a true one even to the extent of draining the last drop from the river-bed? Here is a water-supply whose capacity for irrigation purposes is absolutely inexhaustible. No reservoirs are needed. Nature has herself built reservoirs in the ice-locked mountains where she holds the accumulated snows of winter, turning them into moisture and sending it to the valleys when

the soil-tiller's "need is the sorest." The question of thus utilizing the forces of nature may never, for many years certainly will not, receive serious attention. The river will flow on undisturbed by the state, except that from year to year a few dams and dikes and shore protections will be built, a few gravel bars dredged away, and a few snags removed, all to make way for a commerce which, in sufficient magnitude to justify governmental appropriations, exists only in the imagination. But the dwellers of the valley being periodically pacified by these paltry pittances from the public purse, the paramount problem of making the river build up that country and convert these arid and barren wastes into productive farm-lands will go on unsolved.

Yet who can doubt that this is the true office of the mighty stream to the valley through which it flows? A highway for commerce? Why, a single track railway along the valley, which could be built at a mere fraction of the expense of permanently "improving" the river, and which would be "navigable" the year round, would be of infinitely greater value as a highway for commerce than the river is likely ever to be. When a systematic project is adopted for the irrigation of the Missouri valley with the waters of the river itself, then and not till then will we see a revival of commerce along the valley. Then we shall see there thriving gardens and fields of grain like those that dot the foot-hills of the Rockies all over the great mountain region, while new villages will spring up, not to decay after a season of temporary prosperity, but to flourish permanently with a growth and activity equal to those of the palmiest days of Fort Benton.

DAVID HARTLEY AND THE AMERICAN COLONIES

ENGLAND'S SIGNER OF THE DEFINITIVE TREATY OF PEACE

The final act in the series of events which restored tranquillity to five great nations and peace to the world-on the 3d of September, 1783, possesses a dramatic interest beyond the mere portraiture of the men who placed their autographs upon the notable document. We can see the

vast British Empire, through its chosen representative, bowing to the divinity of a new liberty in a new world.

David Hartley had not only distinguished himself in parliament by his mediations for the good of America, but in all the differences of opinion attending the conduct of the war to overcome the Revolution had commanded the respect and confidence of contending parties about him. He was a statesman of learning, a man of well-known integrity, sincere without ostentation, of lofty benevolence, and belonged to the highest type of the old English cultured Christian gentleman. As champion of the rights of the colonists, he endeavored at all times, by personal effort and wise counsel, to soften the policy of England and to accord to America, through his deep sense of justice, the privileges that the people were clamorously demanding. It would appear from the history of the times that the home government, through its incoming and outgoing ministry, failed to discern the real trend of events. But David Hartley was early in the field with a petition to parliament asking that the grievances of the colonies, then deepening in tone and growing in number, be considered, and that such legislation be immediately entered upon as those grievances severally demanded. In support of his resolution, he said: *

"For one hundred and fifty years the united colonies were left to themselves upon the fortune and caprice of private adventurers to encounter every difficulty and danger. During this period of their establishment in all the difficulties belonging separately to their situation, in all the Indian wars which did not immediately concern us, we left them to fight their own battles and to defend their own frontiers. We conquered no country for them; we purchased none; we cleared none; we drained none; nor did we make a foot of land in all the inhospitable wilderness to which they at first retreated-habitable for them. What, then, did we do? Precisely nothing toward their support while in their state of infancy; but as they rose to be considerable by their own perseverance and by their unparalleled industry, we then began to keep watch over their increasing numbers, in order to secure the profits of their labor to ourselves; we took especial care that they should enjoy none of the advantages of a free commerce with other nations, but obliged them to receive their whole supplies from us at our own price, and upon our own terms. With regard to the great objects of commerce we permitted them to do this and forbid them to do that, just as it suited the caprice of the

*This quotation from David Hartley's eloquent speech will be read with interest, as it is almost inaccessible at the present day.

ruling powers; but at the same time, in all our acts, the interest of this country was the avowed object.

Now, when they have surmounted the difficulties and begin to hold up their heads, and show a distant glimpse of that empire which promises to be the foremost in the world, we claim them as property without any consideration of their own rights, and as if they had been paupers bred up by national bounty and provided for by national expense. We arrogate to ourselves the sole direction of their political economy and the sole disposal of their well-earned property.

Moreover, it ought not to be forgotten that as soon as the rapid progress they had made in cultivation had discovered the value of American plantations, and had inspired rival nations with a desire of imitating their example and emulating their vigor and their industry, and that partly by policy and partly by force the enemy began to surround the ancient settlers and encroach upon their boundaries, that then, when the common interest made their cause a common cause, and war became necessary, they then, even in the opinion of this house, bore more than their proportion in that war, and were chiefly instrumental in its success; and so sensible was parliament at the time of the zeal and the strenuous exertions of the colonists that it actually voted considerable sums by way of compensation for their liberality and service. How strange, then, must it seem to them to hear nothing down to the year 1763 but encomiums on their active zeal and strenuous efforts, and no longer after than 1764 to find the tide turn, and from that year to this to hear it asserted that they were a burden upon the parent state, and that at least forty millions of the national debt were contracted on their account-an assertion as void of truth as of common sense.

It was not Every ship

It was not upon their account that the war was declared. their trade, but the trade of Great Britain, that was at stake. from America is bound to Great Britain; none enter American ports but British ships and British subjects. Their cargoes are your cargoes, your manufactures, your commodities; their navigators your navigators, ready upon all occasions to man your fleets and strengthen your hands against whatever power dares to declare itself your enemy. Why, then, charge them with the expense of a war in which they were only your assistants, and in the spoils of which they had no participation? In the conquest of that war they never thought of declaring to you what to keep or what to give up, little dreaming that the expenses of the military governments that were reserved were to be charged to their account."

Mr. Hartley concluded by saying that "the sincerity of his intentions