During the time I was in New York city, the Customhouse officers were kept very busy. The duties on the imported goods were of great amount, and the officers were employed all day long in the open air, from sun-rise till dark, when the thermometer was many degrees below zero. General Waller was thus employed, weighing iron from Sweden and Russia, all day long. Goods by wholesale are sold much cheaper in New York than I had supposed, and I had no correct idea of the vast amount of its commerce, until I had been in the city two weeks. Considerable as the amount of duties on goods received in this city, is, yet the goods not paying any duty, such as cotton, Orleans sugar, and domestic manufactures, is still greater. The amount too, of flour, wheat, corn, pork, beef, lard, &c., brought here, is much more than I had supposed it to be. When we have a despotism in this country, all these goods will pay a duty to the government. It might amount to twenty millions of dollars annually, and would then be a very low duty on domestic products. We say this for the lovers of low wages and free trade. As this nation increases in numbers--as the western States fill up with people--as the amount of agricultural and manufactured goods increases, and as the foreign goods, consumed in this great and growing nation, increase, the city of New York will increase its numbers of people, its commerce, wealth and power. Her ships and commerce will float on every sea and every ocean, until she will rival London herself in trade, wealth and power. The position of New York, so near the main ocean, on an island, laved too by the North river and the Sound, affords every facility which she needs or could desire, for extending her commerce not only to foreign countries, but into the interior of this vast country. She will only need a rail-road to the Pacific, and a dense population, settled along its whole route, to enliven and animate the scenery along its way. In that event, steam vessels, running from Astoria to China and Japan and all the islands of the northern Pacific, would soon be seen on the Upper Pacific, conveying the productions of the whole world to a market. Such a rail-road might be made by the nation, from the land sales in the new regions to be settled by our people. What a sublime, moral, political and commercial prospect is held out to our enraptured eyes! Christians, statesmen, Americans and scholars, look on this picture!