the making of iron is languishing, and its results are uncertain and precarious. The works established are not driven to half their capacity, with incredible loss to the state and deep injury to its citi

zens.

Pennsylvania there are 788 of these establishments in all, of which 208 are employed in the cotton, and 580 in the woolen manufacture. The pecuniary value of these establishments is not at present ascertainable.

What has made England the richest No one needs be told of the agricul country in Europe, but the possession of tural capacities of Pennsylvania, of the coal and iron, and the protection they fertility of the soil, and the excellence received, in the early period of their of her farmers. According to the same history, from the ruinous effects of for- census, she is the largest wheat-proeign competition? The relation which ducing state of the Union, her product England bears to the rest of Europe, being now greater than that of agriculfrom the wealth which these minerals tural Ohio, and far exceeding in quantity amass, will be sustained by Pennsylva- that of her neighbor, the State of Newnia towards her sisters of the confedera- York. The returns give to Pennsylvania cy. Your writers go far towards assign- 15,482,191 bushels, or 2,400,000 bushels ing, as the only reason for England be- more than New-York, whose arable docoming the great capitalist of Europe, main is confessedly greater. Several her possession of coal and iron. Profess- of the states are before Pennsylvania in or Buckland informs us that the facili- the article of maize, or Indian corn, but ties imparted by coal to manufacture, she carries the palm in the general proenable less than one million of her pop- ductions of agriculture. These fruits of ulation to perform the labor, in the pro- her fields are constantly on the increase, duction of artificial fabrics, of 400,000,000 and considering the broad belt of sterile of persons. Richard Cobden discovers mountains which divide and environ her, in her iron and coal "the primary and the vast area of the mineral soil, the source of her wealth and power," and prevailing fertility of her extended declares that the want of them alone plains and valleys inspires the emotion "prevents other nations of Europe from of wonder as well as the sentiment of rivaling her in manufacturing great- gratitude. This is doubtless owing ness." McCulloch and other writers of chiefly to the bounty of nature, but authority confirm this view, and express something is due to the cultivation and the conviction that if the British coal thrift, the industry and intelligence of should become exhausted, her boasted the rural population. The practical manufactures, now so dependent upon farmer of Pennsylvania cannot find a machinery, would soon become extinct. happier or more plentiful home than You may hence see, in the countless that which his own acres supply. They abundance of these minerals over Penn- in turn cultivate his virtues, while they sylvania, one of the grand sources of her bound the circle of his wants and amdomestic wealth, and in the early and bition. extensive developments of these elements of convenience and manufacture, and in the means of their conveyance to market, her best title to preeminence in commerce.

"Each wish contracting fits him for the soil."

It may now be well to compute by authentic arithmetic the aggregate amount of her various and multiplied resources. I rely for the accuracy of my figures upon estimates, prepared in the year 1844, from the official returns of the United States census of 1840, and compiled under the eyes of John Downs and Freeman Hunt, the well-known editor of the Merchants' Magazine, a work generally received as correct in its statistical details. According to these tables, the total value of real estate in Pennsylvania is $1,400,000,000, and of personal property $700,000,000, making a capital of TWENTY-ONE HUNDRED MILLIONS OF In DOLLARS! No estimate of the real and

Pennsylvania contains within her borders a larger number of factories for the making of cotton and woolen goods, than any state of the Union; nor has any member of the confederacy a deeper stake in the due encouragement of these two species of domestic industry. The census of 1850 places her highest in number on the list of these establishments, even above the large manufacturing States of Massachusetts and New-York. The former has 213 cotton, and 119 woolen factories, and the latter 86 for cotton, and 149 for wool.

Capabilities for Foreign Commerce-Pennsylvania Rail-road. 591

personal property of New-York amount- been employed in making tunnels and

ed, at that period, to one-third of this aggregate. If we add to it the wealth which has since been accumulated, by constant development and unstinted expenditure, the sum will be so much increased as to depress New-York still lower, in comparison with Pennsyl

vania.

Such is the present wealth, and such the foundation of the future resources of this state. And, thanks to the prodigality of a former age, these riches are not wholly unproductive, nor "dead weights" upon the present times. Capital is still required adequately to unfold this magazine of nature, though much has already been expended. For the development of the mineral wealth of the state, I ascertain that the expenditure amounts to five times the sum appropriated by Congress to all physical improvements whatever in the United States, since the year 1804,-for roads, fortifications, harbors, and rivers!

Let us then see how the public spirit and enlightened activity of her metropolis, under the depressions of an exiled commerce, a transferred and buried capital, has made these multiplied benefits her own. This view will exhibit the capabilities of the city to sustain a large foreign commerce, and present such inducements as may exist, to the collection of the funds necessary to establish at her port a line of regular steamers.

adits to coal, and subterranean and superficial structures, for mining, and in the disinterment of iron ore, and works connected with its manufacture, would more than double the expenditure for railways and canals. No city in the Union has been so profuse as Philadelphia in the application of its capital, to develop the material wealth of the state in which she is situated; nor can any other state of the confederacy exhibit such extensive lines of artificial conveyance.

As Pennsylvania is in the van among her sisters in resources and improvements, so will be the destiny of her metropolis in magnitude and trade. SHE, and not New-York, is the GREAT DISTRIBUTER AND SELLER OF MERCHANDISE to a large portion of the western and southern country. Not content with various railway connections with many, the chief points of trade in her own state, she will soon hold in her iron embrace the cities of Columbus, Cincinnati, and St. Louis, by way of Pittsburgh, the great western emporium of Pennsylvania. To these granaries, the various avenues of western trade converge. At no distant day she will place her cars, by way of her own great entrepot, at Cleveland, in Ohio, and by direct communication, at the town of Erie, in her own state, on the Lake. These connections will secure a large portion of the trade of that grand highway of waters. At Wheeling, in The whole number of railways within the State of Virginia, she will particithe State of Pennsylvania, which exceed pate with Baltimore in the southern a mile in length, is 42, embracing to- trade. These points of junction give to gether an aggregate extent of 1132 Philadelphia the trade of that immense miles. Authentic data are before me, region west, north, and south, whose laboriously compiled by Col. Childs, luxuriant opulence would build into which show that the cost of constructing greatness and sustain the prosperity of much the greater portion of these 1132 many cities. Locally situated between miles of railway, amounts to the sum of New-York and the fertile districts be$48,236,431. If to this sum be added yond, their trade is naturally hers, and the cost of those which are not officially she now is stretching out her iron arms ascertained, and of those prolonged to receive what nature so bountifully beyond our limits, but made with Pennsylvania capital, the estimate, upon New-York, having no geographical reasonable presumptions, would greatly connection with the West, is limited by increase the line of distance, and swell her natural boundary to the lake trade, the whole expenditure to above sixty and encounters, in her ambitious enmillions of dollars. The length of the canals made within the borders of Pennsylvania is above 1,000 miles, the construction of which may be estimated to have cost nearly thirty millions of dollars. The immense sums which have

offers.

deavors to seize our western commerce, the interposing barrier of the county of Erie, in Pennsylvania. If the existing legislation of the state is to be respected, and future legislatures prove faithful to their duty, the gate of the West will never

This

be opened to such an avenue as the New- cellent engineer,* by whom it has been York and Erie Rail-road. This thorough- capitally located on the shortest line fare is constructed upon the very narrow which nature permits, with light gradiprinciple of the wide guage, for the ex- ents, and built in the best manner, and clusive benefit of the city of New York, at the least possible expense. and to prevent any beneficial union with undertaking has been well sustained by the works of Pennsylvania, the width popular appreciation, and by the liberalof whose railways requires different en- ity of public and private assistance. It gines and cars. Confining her to Dun- will literally redeem the pledge of its kirk, until Philadelphia shall have original friends, that no debt should be inreached the port of Erie, with a rail- curred in its prosecution, and that the way which she is resolved to construct, great work should be carried on and the western roads of the guage common finished by means alone of subscriptions to Ohio, will converge at the same ter- to the capital stock. This policy, which minus, and their cars, by a better and was declared to be fundamental, has shorter route, will pass directly to Phil- been faithfully observed; and the capiadelphia, leaving to New-York only tal of the company, now nearly if not that portion of trade which is specially fully subscribed, must prove, so unlike all destined for a northern mart. Such an previous efforts in Pennsylvania, a paying arrangement secures to Philadelphia the stock, greatly beyond the legal interest of commerce concentrated at Erie, as she money, and of consequence universally has already secured that of the upper in demand. lakes at Cleveland. By her connections with Cincinnati and Wheeling, she will appropriate to herself much of that southern custom which is intended to enrich the metropolis of the state of Maryland.

The successful completion of this enterprise will create a motive or incitement to the construction of a great railway, which shall connect Sunbury with Erie. Such a work will control the destinies of that mighty commerce with It is by means of the Pennsylvania which Philadelphia will be enriched by railway to Pittsburgh, prolonged west- the intermediate country and the northwardly to St. Louis, joining Cleveland west, concentrated at the lake, its on one side, and Wheeling and Cincin- northern terminus. Those disjointed nati on the other, and stretching through links, which the continuity of the chain Kentucky to Nashville, and ulterior requires, between Harrisburg and Sunpoints, that Philadelphia will enjoy the immense trade of the Upper Lakes, of the Ohio, of the Upper Mississippi, and of their numerous, beautiful, and teeming tributaries. The improvements of New-York cannot offer a competition with Philadelphia, for the trade of that expansive region, of which these cities and towns form the natural drains, or the grand foci. Cleveland is 175 miles, and Cincinnati 249 miles nearer to Philadelphia than New-York; and the remoter points of junction beyond maintain these relative distances. The completion of the railway, now nearly finished, which is to connect these rich and wide domains to Philadelphia, will form a marked era in her history. It will be the epoch not merely of the commencement of an intimate intercourse with the West and its dependencies, but the time when other enterprises are to spring into life.

No untoward accident has ever marred the prospects of the Pennsylvania rail-road, which has been blest in an ex

bury, will be speedily undertaken, so as to form an unbroken connection with these interesting and fertile regions. No doubt can be entertained that Philadelphia will shake off all apathy and unconcern, and rouse herself to the magnitude of a present and impending danger. The cars of the New-York and Erie railway are now in the vicinity of the town of Erie in Pennsylvania, and menace Philadelphia with the abstraction of her trade in her own state, and at one of the most copious sources of its supply.

That selfish and exclusive policy which suggested the six-feet guage in opposition to the general guage of the country, will, in the presence of a rival, produce the natural effect of illiberality, in cutting off a profitable union between that railway and the western roads. It indeed prevents the single evil which this short-sighted policy proposed alone to redress,-the diversion of merchan

* John Thompson, Esq.

Western Trade-New-York and Erie Rail-Road.

ART. VIII-SLAVERY AND SLAVE STATISTICS OF THE SOUTH, ETC.

STATISTICS OF NEGRO POPULATION NORTH AND SOUTH-FOREIGN MISREPRESENTATION OF THE SOUTH-NASHVILLE AND MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE, ETC.