The National Intelligencer And Washington Advertiser

FOR THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER.
A piece in the Independent American, signed Potomac, on the improvement of agriculture and commerce of the countries bordering that river, has occasioned the following:
DELAWARE TO POTOMAC.
Dear Brother
I see by a late paper of Mr. Patterson, a printer in your Georgetown, that you can write, and, I therefore presume you can read. On this presumption, and by the help of Mr. Smith, another of your printers, I will address a few lines to you. I hope you will not take it amiss; for I really think, that our correspondence may become as useful, if not to ourselves, at least to our subjects (or citizens as they choose to be called), as most of that which they carry on between themselves.
It is reported among us, that your people are building a famous city upon your banks, as my people have done upon mine; and that, like me, you are destined to support the weight of a great commercial and imperial capital. In fact it is said (though I have not been able to perceive it by any diminution of pressure on my sides) that the seat of empire has already passed from me to you If so, you must hear me with patience; and though you feel power you must not forget right. My son, Schuylkill, has been complaining to me these some years past of the depredations made upon his banks to ornament and enrich yours. He says his limestone and his marble are torn from his very bowels, and carried away by ship-loads, not only to countries destitute of these things, where there might be some excuse for such depredations, but to you, my dear brother, to your borders and banks, to a country abounding in these precious ponderous materials.
My son informs me further, that having cut up his limestone, they cut down his trees, those waving ornaments of which the boy is so proud; and with these they burn the stones into lime, and with these they build ships to carry it off. Thus he is robbed of his ribs and shorn of his locks, and all this to no purpose, he says, but to help those who can, but will not, help themselves. it is in vain that I endeavor to comfort him by opening his eyes to the true principles of commerce; that the value of these privations must be repaid by reciprocal advantages; that the wealth which flows back from your people to mine, must go to enrich our plains and ornament our banks In one way or another; that wheat fields & orchards, and handsome houses and a joyful industrious population are real acquisitions, and are worth more to us than the telling raw materials that we send abroad to purchase them. These are arguments for him, and they are true; but to you, my dear Mack, I must use a different language, and one which is likewise true.
You know I love you, my potent friend, and cherish all the ties of interest as well as kindred that exist between us We are both in the same country, we mingle in the same sea, we drink from the same clouds. Not a south wind blows, but I feel myself refreshed by your vapors descending in my rains; and I am happy in the idea that my norther airs carry the same benefits to you This aerial gratitude commerce between ourselves, is and ought to be attended by that gainful and mercenary commerce among our people suited to their respective situations. For this I freely lend my veins, my ships, my lights, my buoys; for this I drive away my ice as early in the year as the frost will let me; and for this I reckon your productions, such as they are, on the same footing with, my own.
But really, brother Mack, there is a great deal of truth in what your nephew, my brave Schuylkill states. According to the accounts of travellers, you have the limestone and he the pole in great abundance on all your banks and on your upper branches. There is your fairy Monocacy, your long Shenandoah, your crooked sons of the west, nay you yourself in all your giant bulk, are rich with these rocks; you are lined and headed in the firm palaces of your people. Why do they not bring them out? The wood is yours, the stones are yours, they both lie on your banks, and your navigation is open, or you pretend it is, to the places where they lie: Why do they pay three dollars a barrel for lime and that of our brothers and cousins of the north, when you could give it to the men in all your cities at one dollar a barrel?
Excuse the mention of money; for you and I, though not of the race of mortals, must speak their language when we speak of their affairs and use their pen and ink.
Let me hear from you, my dear brother Potomac, on this subject. I shall write you again as soon as and as often as our interests or our affections require.
DELAWARE.