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enactment, this man should be endowed with a power to buy his goods and provisions at half the whole sum they were compelled to pay for the same things. And it still would seem a hard case too, if by that same enactment he should be empowered to buy his goods so cheap that it would break up the entire business of his neighbors, who had for years been striving to build up a paying business upon small means. Do not some of our railway projects and their backers, taken in connection with the iron manufacturers of the United States, stand somewhat in the above relation? Let us look at a few facts. In this country we use iron material in almost everything. In fact we can find no business or occupation with which it does not enter largely, and its use is every day increasing. In this country, likewise, we have iron ores and coal in such abundance, that if the mines were properly worked, we could supply the world for centuries, and still have an overplus in the crude state beyond human calculation. The country is yet young, and from the high price of labor and the want of experience, we have been unable to work our mining riches with such facility as to compete with our trans-atlantic neighbors who have greater means and experience. The consequence has been that we have been compelled to pay the foreign manufacturers a profit upon his labor and capital, and still pay a heavy amount for transportation. Once in a great while we have so adjusted the tariff that some efforts to manufacture our own iron would be crowned with partial success, when straightway down goes the tariff and in pours foreign iron in such quantities and at such prices, that our manufac turers were compelled to stop their works and go into some other business. This game of battle-door and shuttle-cock with the iron manufacturing interests of the United States, has been played for many years, and the foreign manufacturer so well understands his game, that it always ends to his advantage and to the disadvantage of this country. The price of iron guaged by our necessities, is regulated by a league of foreign manufacturers, and they are determined to have a monopoly of our market-to them the richess in the world. Let them understand that it is necessary to sell us at no profit for three or five years to retain our market and prevent our own manufacturing progress, and they will do it. They have the combined wealth and power to compel others to follow their lead. If the duty on foreign iron should be repealed in the United States, the price in England would immediately advance to such point as would pay the highest profit to the foreign manufacturer, and still prevent our forges and furnaces from going into opera

tion.

The present tariff, aided by a most extraordinary consumption of iron in this country, has allowed of some increase of our own manufactures. We have begun in some little degree to get our works going again. Some of these are doing a paying business, and should the present demand continue, and the tariff remain un

disturbed, in a few years we should increase very considerably our home product, and so far make some progress in achieving a par tial independence of the dictation of the foreign manufacturer. We could not do this with the present tariff, were we not aided by other circumstances of moment. It is well known that very large numbers of English iron workers have gone to the gold fields of Australia, and that consequently labor there is higher, and may continue so to be for some years. It would be wise for us at this juncture to take advantage of circumstances. Our national interest is pre-eminently the iron manufacture.-Every State in the Union is interested in it. Let the country remember the history of the cotton manufacturers in this country, and apply it to our iron interests. We now manufacture cotton cloth of almost every grade, and compete with those of England, even in her own markets. If we are wise, we shall foster our iron manufacturers to just such an end.

ARTICLE IV.

From Livingston's Law Reporter.

Newspapers and Public Libraries.

The origin of newspapers, like that of many institutions important to modern civilization, is to be referred to Italy The war which the Republic of Venice waged against Solyman II., in Dalmatia, gave rise, in 1563, to the custom in Venice of communicating the military and commercial information received, by written sheets (notizie scritte) to be read at a particular place by those desirous to learn the news, who paid for this privilege in a coin, not any longer in use, called gazetta -a name which, by degrees, was transferred to the newspaper itself in Italy and France, and passed over into England.* A file of these Venetian papers, for sixty years, is still preserved in the Magliabecchi Library at Florence. The first regular paper was a monthly, written, government paper at Venice; and Chalmers, in his life of Ruddiman, informs us that "a jealous government did not allow a printed newspaper; and the Venetian Gazetta continued long after the invention of printing, to the close of the sixteenth century, and even to our own days, to be distributed in manuscript." Those who first wrote newspapers were called, by the Italians, menanti, be

* Some etymologists have thought the name gazetta is to be derived from gazzera, a magpie, or, in this case, a chatterer; others from the Latin gaza, which, being colloquially lengthened into gazetta, would signify a little treasury of news. The Spanish derive it, indeed, from the Latin gaza, [Greek, gaza] though their newspapers, least of all, deserve the name of treasure. They have a peculiar word, wanting in our idiom, gazetista, a lover of the gazette. The German zeitung is from the ancient theidinge or theidung [the English, tiding, the Swedish, tiding ar.]

cause, says Vossius, they intended commonly, by these loose papers, to spread about defamatory reflections, and were therefore prohibited in Italy, by Gregory XIII., in a particular bull, under the name of Menantes (from the Latin minantes, threatening). Menage derives the name, with more probability, from the Italian menare, which signifies "to lead at large," or, "spread afar." Perhaps it will not be irrelevant, however, for the writer to remark, that it is common for the Mecklenburg peasantry, as he knows from experience, to call the newspaper de Legenblad (the lying paper); and the German proverb in use to this day, "He lies like print," (er luegt wie gedruckt,) is probably connected with this view of early newspapers.

The first English genuine newspaper appeared under Elizabeth, in the epoch of the Spanish Armada, of which several, printed when the Spanish fleet was in the English Channel, during the year 1588, are preserved in the British Museum; and it is very curious how much the mode of communicating certain kinds of intelligence in these early papers resemble the forms in use at present. The earliest newspaper is entitled "The English Mercurie," which, by authority, "was imprinted at London, by her highness's printer, 1588." These were, however, but extraordiuary gazettes, not regularly published. Periodical papers seem first to have been more generally used by the English during the civil wars of the time of the Commonwealth, to disseminate sentiments of loyalty or resistance. They were called weekly news-books. Though Mercury was the prevailing title of most, the quaintness which marks the titles of books in that age, is found also in the names of the "news-books;" for instance, the Secret Owl, Heraclitus Ridens, the Weekly Discoverer, and the Discoverer Stript Naked, &c. A catalogue of the Mercuries would exhibit a curious picture of those singular times.

We learn from Buckingham's specimens of newspaper literature, that the earliest newspaper established in North America was the Boston News-Letter, the first number of which was issued April 24, 1704.

A comparison of the number of periodicals and inhabitants of different countries, gives the following results:

In 1827, there appeared in Great Britain, 483 different newspapers and other periodicals to 23,400,000 inhabitants; in Sweden and Norway, 82 journals to 3,866,000 inhabitants; in the States of the Church, 6 newspapers to 2,598,000 inhabitants; (Stockholm, with 78,000 inhabitants, has 30 journals; Rome, with 154,000, only 3); Denmark, to 1,950,000 inhabitants, has 80 journals, of which 71 are in the Danish language; 23 are devoted to politics; 25 to the sciences. Prussia has 12,416,000 inhabitants, and 288 journals and periodicals. (Berlin has 221,000 inhabitants, and 53 periodical works; Copenhagen has 109,000 inhabitants, and 57 journals) The Netherlands have 6,143,000 inhabitants, and 150 journals. In the German Confederation, (excluding Austria and Prussia,) there are 13,300,000 inhabitants, and 305 journals; in Saxony, to 1,400,000 inhabitants, 54 newspapers; in Hanover, to 1,550,000 inhabitants, 16 newspapers; in Bavaria, to 3,960,000 inhabitants, 48 newspapers. France, with a population of 32,000,000, has 490 periodical works, (660 printing establishments, 1,500 presses ;) in Paris, 81 printing establishments, or 850 presses.

In Paris alone, containing 890,000 inhabitants, there are 176 periodical works.

The following table, arranged for the American Almanac of 1830, is corrected from the Traveller, and contains a statement of the number of newspapers published in the colonies at the commencement of the Revolution, and also the number of newspapers and other periodical works in the United States in 1810 and 1828:

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The following is the state of the newspaper press in the U. S. in 1810, as extracted from a number of the National Intelligencer: New Hampshire, 12 papers, 624,000 circulation; Massachusetts, 32 papers, 2,873,000 circulation; Rhode Island, 7 papers, 331,800 circulation; Connecticut, 11 papers, 657,800 circulation; Vermont, 14 papers, 682,400 circulation; New York, 66 papers; 4,139,200 circulation; New Jersey, 8 papers, 332,800 circulation; Pennsylvania, 71 papers, 4,542,200 circulation; Delaware, 2 papers, 166,400 circulation; Maryland, 21 papers, 1,903,200 circulation; District of Columbia, 6 papers, 686,400 circulation; Virginia, 23 papers, 1,289,600 circulation; North Carolina, 10 papers, 416,000 circulation; South Carolina, 10 papers, 842,400 circulation; Georgia, 13 papers, 707,200 circulation; Kentucky, 17 papers, 618,800 circulation; Tennessee,6 papers, 171,600 circulation; Ohio, 14 papers, 473,200 circulation; Indiana Territory, 1 paper, 15,600 circulation; Mississippi Territory, 4 papers, 83,200 circulation; Orleans Territory, 10 papers, 748,800 circulation; Louisiana Territory, 1 paper, 15,100 circulation. Total for the U.S., 358 papers; circulation, 22,222,200.

The North American colonies, in the year 1720, had only seven newspapers; in 1810, the United States had 358; in 1825, they had 640; in 1830, 1,000, with a population of 13,000,000.

ARTICLE V.

From the American Railroad Journal.

Probable Effect of an European War upon American Securities.

An European War being certain, one of the most interesting problems involved, as far as this country is concerned, is its probable effect upon the intrinsic and marketable value of our securities, particularly those issued on account of railroads, and works of similar character.

From the intimate relations which subsist between the United States and all the commercial nations of Europe, each is, to a certain degree, necessarily affected by the condition of the other. If one be prosperous, all share in this prosperity. If the contrary be the fact, all suffer. At the present day, no nation, however independent its action, and however free from political and diplomatic entanglements, can escape the effect of the conduct or condition of its neighbor. Commercially, they belong to one community. If a paralysis strike a particular branch of industry of one of the members, it falls upon a corresponding branch of that of another. Should cotton spinning in Great Britain cease, the production of the raw material in this country would be largely curtailed. If European nations become too poor to purchase our staples, their previous value is the measure of our loss. Our people, therefore, are to be effected by a war in the same manner as those of France or England, only in a vastly less degree.

But the effect of a war will extend beyond the mere influence it exerts upon the price of our staples. An opinion adverse to one of our more important interests, may do us as much harm as would the loss of one of our leading crops.-Should a war create a distrust as to the value of European securities, and depress their market value, a similar sentiment, by necessary sympathy, would cross the Atlantic, and exert a similar effect upon the securities of this country. There may be no necessary reason for such coincidence, and no satisfactory explanation for it. The price of English consols has certainly nothing to do with the value of Erie or New York Central stocks, yet the quotations of the latter dance attendance upon the former with as much certainty as the shadow does the substance.

The first shock that European securities reveived, was consequently followed by a corresponding decline of those of the United States, in obedience to what seems to be an unvarying law. We may always calculate a certain result in this country to be due to a real or assumed condition of affairs in Europe. But in the present case, there are other reasons than those named, why this country should feel the effects of an European war. For several years past our people have been in the habit of borrowing large

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