reached, and pushing the variety beyond the equator, it increases, and far down into the other hemisphere diversifies the wonderful assortment, until sugar and coffee, rice and indigo, drugs and spices, cocoa and cotton, cochineal and tobacco, India rubber, dyewoods, peltries, flax and wool, gums, various ornamental woods, mines of silver, gold and precious stones, of new varieties, kinds and virtues, have been reached, and added to the list of countless treasures, boundless commercial capacities, and dazzling resources, of these two magnificent water-sheds. Save and except tea, which is the only article of commerce that is gathered from the field, the forest or the mine, that is not to be found in one or the other of these two river basins, everything that is grown or cultivated upon the face of the earth is to be found in equal, if not in greater perfection and abundance, in one or the other of these valleys, than in any other part of the world. One of these is in the rear of New-Orleans -the other, in its front. It is for this convention to say whether these two rivers shall be united in the bonds of commerce or not. The Amazon, with its tributaries, is said to afford an inland navigation, up and down, of not less than 70,000 miles. The country drained by that river, and water courses connected with it, is more than half as large as Europe, and it is thought to contain nearly as much arable land within it as is to be found on that continent. It has resources enough to maintain a population of hundreds of millions of souls. The navigation on that river is at present such, that the people of the upper country can make but one trip in the year. They have there, in their delightful climate of an everlasing spring, the calm season and the trade-wind season. The trade-winds blow up the river. In the calm season, the natives, in their rude bungaloes, loaded with the produce of the upper country, drift down with the current. Arrived with their stuffat Para, they sell almost for dollars what they got for cents at the place of production. Having completed the business of the season, they wait for the S. E. trade-winds to set in; with them they return, and complete the business and the trading for the year. To afford the Convention an idea of the business carried on, by sea, with Para, I quote returns of exports for the year ending Dec. 31st, 1850, which Mr. Norris, the American Consul for that port, has had the kindness to furnish me: EXPORTS FROM THE PORT OF PARA FOR THE YEAR ENDING DEC. 31, 1850. To the United States.......21,889.... Total Export.. .47,528....63,676....92....2 This is a growing business. A friend who has crossed the Andes, and is now on his way home, down the Amazon, informs me that parts of the Puna country, of Peru and Bolivia, and in which the waters of the Amazon take their rise, are already over-populated; that portions of the Amazonian water-shed, over which he had passed, are "rich in flocks of sheep; and all that is wanted is a close market (which the free navigation of the Amazon would give) to induce the shepherds to raise millions." No other part of the world grows wool like this. It is peculiar. He reports fine sugar and coffee plantations there, with cotton growing wild; also, there are cinnamon groves, and forests of the tree from which the Peruvian bark, which affords quinine and physic to the world, is taken; and being put on the back of these sheep and asses, is transported from the head navigable waters of the Amazon, 600 miles, among the clouds and snow-capped mountain-ranges, to the Pacific. It now goes west, and when it arrives at the seaport town of Arica, it is worth annually, half a million. With the right to send an American steamboat up the Amazon, all this stuff would come east and flow down that river. With the free navigation of the Amazon, a steamer might load at St. Louis with the produce of those high latitudes, and deliver its cargo right at the foot of the Andes, where the Amazon leaps down from the mountain into the plains below. With a portage easy to overcome by the hand of improvement, she could then ascend the steppes of the Andes, travel several hundred miles farther up, and deliver her cargo within hail of Cuzco and the mines of Peru. The free navigation of that river is in cluded, I conceive among the subjects, with regard to which the committee has invited me to express my views to the Convention; and I hope the Convention will deem it not unworthy of their careful consideration. Considering the softness of its climates, the fertility of its soils, and the lavish hand with which nature stands ready to fill for the husbandman the horn of plenty there; and when man is thus surrounded, considering that his industrial energies are for the most part addressed to the tillage of the earth; and considering, moreover, the character of the people who inhabit that valley of the South, and the character of the people who inhabit this of the North; we are struck with the fact and it is a physical fact-that the valley of the Amazon is but a commercial appendage of the Mississippi; and that it rests with us and the course of policy which we may pursue, whether this physical fact shall be converted into a practical one; and whether the South will suffer the geographical advantages of its position with regard to that region to go by default, as it has similar advantages in other cases. Attention to this subject cannot be given too soon, or too earnestly. Its importance is great. Legions of benefits and advantages are to flow from it; many of them are palpable and obvious; some are dim in the mists of the future; but all of them are certain. In short, as a commercial matter, the free navigation of the Amazon is the question of the age. As time and use shall develop its bearings, our children will weigh the effects upon the prosperity of the country, of the free navigation of the Amazon with the acquisition of Louisiana. They will place them in the balance together to contrast and compare them; and on considering the effects of each, they will dispute and wrangle as to which of the two has proved the greater blessing to their country. I inclose, herewith, a pamphlet, entitled "Commercial Conventions-Direct Trade, &c.." in which the subject of steam communications with the mouth of the Amazon, but no further, is treated.* The question which I propose for the especial consideration of the Covention, relates to the free navigation of the Amazon itself to the right of the people of the United States to send their steamboats to that river, to ply up and down it, as they do upon the waters of their own Mississippi, and to buy, sell, and get gain on the banks thereof. produce of one latitude for the produce of another, and for this simple reason: that the planter who grows sugar in Louisiana, does not wish to exchange it for Brazil or any other sugar. He may exchange it for Brazil coffee, or for Brazil anything else that is not sugar. For this reason, Europe, for hundreds of years past, has been struggling for the commerce "of the East ;" and for no other reason, than that latitudes and climates, and consequently wants and produce, that are not to be found or satisfied in Europe, abound in "the East." 66 In a commercial sense, the valleys that are drained by the father of waters," and the "king of rivers," as the Amazon is called, are complements of each other. What one lacks, the other supplies. Together, they furnish all those products and staples which complete the list of articles in the circle of commerce. The right of our people to go with their Mississippi steamers into the Amazon, will, when exercised, draw emigrants to that valley, who, being there, will become our customers; and as soon as the proper impulse is given to their commerce and their industrial pursuits, we shall find there at our doors, instead of away on the other side of the world, all the productions of "the East." In short, "the East," in one sense, will be brought within eight or ten days' sail of New-Orleans, instead of being removed to the distance of four or five months off, as it now is. Several nations, as Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Brazil, are the owners of the Amazon and its navigable tributaries Brazil is the principal owner. All the lower Amazon is hers; and she has given none of the upper countries as yet the right of way through it to and from the sea. The question then is, do the people who are represented in this Convention set any value upon the right to steam and trade up and down the navigable streams of that magnificent water-shed? At present the country is for the most part a wilderness of howling monkeys and noisy parrots; its boundaries are fringed with settlements; but only here and there, when you leave the outskirts of the valley and begin to penetrate into the interior, are the traces of civilized man to be found. To obtain this right is the work of diplomacy. But the states and people who have been invited to this Convention, may by their action, influence that diplomacy. Commerce, so far as climate and soil are concerned in ministering to its wants and in Brazil may be invited to give the free navimparting health and activity to its influ-igation of this river away as a boon to civilences, is based upon an exchange of the ization, and make it common to the world. But it is not to be supposed that Brazil will This paper is published in preceding pages of part with such a jewel without a considera this volume. tion. Shall it be bought with a sum of money? Or shall the free navigation of the Mississippi be offered to Brazil in exchange for the free navigation of the Amazon? By our own laws, an English vessel, or the vessel of any other nation at peace with us, is as free to sail up the Mississippi River, land and take in a cargo at St. Louis, and to come down again, as she is to go up the Chesapeake Bay to Baltimore, or the Delaware to Philadelphia. nations should have the same rights to build and launch boats on the Mississippi River that our people have; that the right to take freight from one landing or town to another, and to trade up and down the river, should be as perfect and as complete to the foreigner of whatever nation, as it is to the American citizen-what would be the effect? Such a surrendering of the "coasting trade," as the river-trade may be properly called, might possibly induce a few foreigners to send over their capital and build boats. But these boats, to compete with our own boats, would have to be manned by our own watermen - officered by our own people. And such a law, therefore, might interfere with American owners. But, instead of such a privilege being of fered to all nations, suppose it were offered only to Brazil, in exchange for like privileges to our own citizens upon her rivers--what would be the result then? But do such foreign vessels go up to St. Louis No. Why? Because when they arrive at New-Orleans with their cargoes of foreign merchandise, which they have brought across the seas, they find it cheaper to send it up in one of our river-boats, than to take it up themselves; and, therefore, though foreign vessels, by our own laws, may go up and come down, yet the free navigation of the Mississippi, to this extent, has proved of no practical value to any of them. Would they go up farther if they could! Why, this Brazil has not even the ener Still the time was, when the free naviga-gy among her own subjects to put boats upon tion of the Mississippi River was a question of deep and absorbing political interest to us; and we may infer, therefore, that the diplomatists of the country would act, when the proper time comes, with more confidence touching the offer to Brazil of the free navigation of the Mississippi for that of the Amazon, after having learned the opinion and wishes upon the subject of the people of the Mississippi valley. Admitted upon the Amazon with their boats, our people would desire to participate there in what is called with us "the river trade;" for considering that the habits of the Amazonians are not at all aquatic, it is not by any means probable, that Brazilian enterprise would be sufficient to supply the boats and boatmen requisite for this river trade. She cannot do it now. her own rivers, where they have the monopoly of trade and navigation; much less would her subjects have the enterprise to come here and put boats upon the Mississippi, to run in competition with our own. On the other hand, we, who have the enterprise, the ener gy, the skill in boat-building, would, with the knowledge, over all the world, which we have in steamboat river navigation, go to the Amazon, and enjoy there something like a practical monopoly. For it is not to be supposed that, if we offer to divide our Mississippi River trade with her subjects, on condition that she will make a like division to us of her Amazonian trade-it is not, such being the conditions, to be supposed, I say, that any other nation would on either side be admitted into the arrangement. There is but one Mississippi River, and but one Amazon, in the world; and there is no equivalent for the free navigation of the one, but the free navigation of the other. Therefore, no nation on the earth can buy and sell a commercial jewel of such value. But are we prepared to let Brazilian capital, and Brazilian subjects, compete with our own people for the business-the river trade -of our own Mississippi waters? We should ask nothing of Brazil which we are not willing to render to Brazil. Are we preThe question, thus narrowed down, is pared, therefore, to offer to admit Brazilian simply this: In enlarging and extending subjects to an equal participation with our the foundations of the commercial system, own citizens, of the trade of the Mississippi which is to make of the United States the River, on condition that she will admit our greatest nation the world ever saw, and of citizens to an equal participation with her the Mississippi valley the heart and centre of own subjects in the river-trade of the Ama-it-are you willing to give the free navigazon and its tributaries? That is the question as to which I desire to draw an expression of opinion from the Convention, because I believe that that opinion, being regarded as the opinion of the people of the Mississippi valley, would have a bearing upon the subject, as one of a practical nature, and of paramount importance. Suppose that the United States should declare that the citizens and subjects of all tion of this river for that of the Amazon? The subject of the free navigation of the Amazon and its tributaries, is a vast one. I have barely touched it. Nor is it necessary for me to attempt a discussion of it: do it justice, I could not. To go into the merits of it, either with the committee, or before the Convention in whose behalf I have been drawn into the subject, I have not the time; and if the time, not the abilities. I merely wished to put the question, and to subscribe myself, gentlemen of the committee, a man of the Southwest, and one who, having the interests of his country greatly at heart, is, with his feeble power, at the service of the committee and Convention in all things for good.-Lieut. M. F. Maury. do in South Carolina? But a small portion of the land we now cultivate will produce two thousand pounds of ginned cotton to the hand. It is thought that our average production cannot exceed twelve hundred pounds, and that a great many planters do not grow over one thousand pounds to the hand. A thousand pounds, at five cents net, will yield about two per cent., in cash, on the capital -PROSPECTS OF THE COTTON INTEREST; Po-three per cent., after paying current plantainvested, and twelve hundred pounds but SOUTHERN INDUSTRY-PROGRESS OF. SITION OF SOUTH CAROLINA; INFLUENCE OF MECHANIC ARTS AND MANUFACTURES; WHAT THE SOUTH IS CAPABLE OF IN COTTON MANUFACTURES; LABOR AT THE SOUTH; FACILITIES FOR STEAM AND WATER POWER; EMPLOYMENT FOR THE POORER CLASSES, ETC.-The Institute, whose first annual exhibition is about to be opened, is something new in South Carolina. If it succeeds in its purposes, a new era in our history will be dated from this anniversary. Hitherto our state has been as purely agricultural as a civilized community can ever be; and for the last sixty years our labor has been chiefly devoted to the production of one market crop. The value of this agricultural staple has been for many years gradually declining, and for the last seven or eight has not afforded to our planters an average net income exceeding four and a half per cent. per annum on their capital. Within the last few months prices have some what rallied; but there is not the slightest ground on which to rest a hope that they will ever hereafter, for any series of years, average higher than they have done since 1840 on the contrary, it is inevitable that they must fall rather lower. The consumption of cotton, even at late average prices, cannot keep pace with our increasing capacity to produce it; and the article may, therefore, be said to have fairly passed that first stage of all new commercial staples, in which prices are regulated wholly by demand and supply, and to have reached that, in which, like gold and silver, its value, occasionally and temporarily affected by demand and supply, will in the main be estimated by the cost of production. Now, on lauds that enable the planter to produce an average crop of two thousand pounds of ginned cotton for each full hand, or for every thousand dollars of capital permanently invested, he may realize seven per cent. per annum on his capital, at a net price of five cents per pound, or five and a half to six cents in our southern ports. There is an abundance of land in the South and south-west, on which, unless the seasons change materially, or the worm becomes an annual visitor, all the cotton which the world will consume for many generations to come may be grown at this rate. We have ample slave labor to cultivate it, and the result is inevitable that the average of prices must soon settle permanently about this point. If these views are correct, what are we to tion expenses. At such rates of income our state must soon become utterly impoverished, and of consequence wholly degraded. DePopulation, to the utmost possible extent, must take place rapidly. Our slaves will go first, and that institution from which we have heretofore reaped the greatest benefits will be swept away; for history, as well as common sense, assures us, beyond all chance of doubt, that whenever slavery ceases to be profitable it must cease to exist. These are not mere paper calculations, or the gloomy speculations of a brooding fancy; they are illustrated and sustained by facts, current facts of our own day, within the knowledge of every one of us. The process of impoverishment has been visibly and palpably going on, step by step, with the decline in the price of cotton. It is well known that for the last twenty years, floating capital, to the amount of five hundred thousand dollars per annum, on the average, has left this city and gone out of South Carolina, seeking and finding more profitable investments than were to be found here. But our most fatal loss, which exemplifies the decline of our agriculture, and the decay of our slave system, has been owing to emigration. The natural increase of the slaves in the South, since the prohibition of the African slave trade, has been thirty per cent. for every ten years. From 1810 to 1820, the increase in South Carolina was a fraction above that rate. From 1820 to 1830, it was a fraction below it. But from 1830 to 1840, the increase was less than seven per cent. in ten years; and the census revealed the painful and ominous fact, that the number of slaves in South Carolina was eighty-three thousand less than it should have been. No war, pestilence, or famine, had visited our land. No change of climate or of management had checked the natural increase of this class of our popu lation. There can be no reasonable doubt that the ratio of its increase had been as fully maintained here as elsewhere. But the fact is, that, notwithstanding the comparatively high average price of cotton from 1:30 to 1840, these slaves had been carried off by their owners at the rate of eight thousand three hundred per annum, from a soil producing to the hand twelve hundred pounds of cotton, on the average, to one that yielded eighteen hundred pounds. And there is every reason to apprehend that the census of next year will show, that the whole increase of the last decade, which must amount to one hundred thousand, has been swept off by the still swelling tide of emigration. Under these circumstances, the question may well be asked again, what are we to do in South Carolina ?-for it is but too obvious that something must be done, and done promptly, to arrest our downward career. To discuss this question fully in all its bearings, and give a satisfactory answer, would consume more time than can be allowed on this occasion; but I trust its importance will be my excuse, if I trespass by a somewhat elaborate examination of some of its essential features. The first remedy for our decaying prosperity which naturally suggests itself is, the improvement of our agricultural system; and of late years a great deal has been said upon this subject. That it is susceptible of great improvement is very clear; but it is equally and lamentably true that little or nothing has as yet been done. It must be owned, that neither our agricultural societies nor our agricultural essays have effected anything worth speaking of. And it does seem that, while the fertile regions of the south-west are open to the cotton planters, it is vain to expect them to embark, to any extent, in improvements which are expensive, difficult, or hazardous. Such improvements are never made but by a prosperous people, full of enterprise, and abounding in capital, like the English, or a people pent up within narrow limits, like the Dutch. Our cotton region is too broad, and our southern people too homogeneous for metes and bounds, to enforce the necessity of improving any particular locality, and our agriculture is now too poorly compensated to attract superfluous capital, or stimulate to enterprise. It is clear that capital, enterprise, some new element of prosperity and hope, must be brought in among us from some yet untried or unexhausted resource, before any fresh and uncommon energy can be excited into action in our agricultural pursuits. In fact, if prices had not gone down, and our lands had not worn out, it may be said, with great truth, that we have too long devoted ourselves to one pursuit to follow it exclusively much longer with dae success in all those particulars which constitute a highly prosperous and highly civilized community. It is a common observation, that no man of one idea, no matter how great his talent and his perseverance, ever can succeed; for both buman affairs and the works of nature are complex, exhibiting everywhere an infinite variety of mutual relations and dependencies, many of which must be comprehended and embraced in searching after truth, which is the essential basis of all real success. So if, guided by the light of history, we look back over the long track of time, we shall find that no nation devoted exclusively to one pursuit has been prosperous or powerful for any extended period. Even the warlike Spartans zealously promoted agriculture. And Rome began to decline from the moment that she ceased to draw her soldiers and her generals from her fields and vineyards. But a people wholly agricultural have ever been, above all others, in all ages, the victims of rapacious tyrants, grinding them down, in ancient times, by force of arms; in modern, by cunning laws. The well-known fact suggests the obvious reason, and the reason illustrates our present condition and apparent prospects. The mere wants of man are few and limited. The labor of one can supply all that the earth can yield for the support of ten. If all labor, there is useless superabundance; if few labor, there is corrupting sloth. And if advancing civilization introduces new wants, and the elegancies and luxuries, as well as the necessaries of life, are to be obtained, the products of agriculture are the least profitable of all articles to barter. Besides that most nations strenuously endeavor to supply them from their own soil, they are usually so bulky and so liable to injury that they can seldom be transported far, and never but at great expense. It is only when an agricultural people are blessed with some peculiar staple of prime importance, nowhere else produced so cheaply, that they can obtain, habitually, a fair compensation by exporting it. But in the present state of the world, when science and industry, backed by accumulated capital, are testing the capacity of every clime and soil on the globe, and the free and cheap communication which is now growing up between all the ends of the earth enables wealth and enterprise to concentrate rapidly on every favored spot, no such monopoly can be long enjoyed if sufficiently valuable to attract the cupidity of man. South Carolina and Georgia were, for some years, almost the only cultivators of cotton in America. As late as 1820, these two states grew more than half the whole crop of the Union. They now produce about one-fifth of it. Such is the history of every agricultural monopoly in modern times. that even when a people possess a permanent But we may safely go further and assert, and exclusive monopoly of a valuable agricul tural staple, for which there is a regular, extensive, and profitable foreign demand, if they limit their industrial pursuits to this single one they cannot become great and powerful. Nay, they cannot now attain the front rank of nations, if they also pursue, as we do, most of the other branches of agriculture, and maintain, as we do not, an independent gov ernment of their own, and exercise the power of making war and peace. The types of man have been infinitely varied by his wise Creator. Our minds are as diverse as our forms and features. The tastes, the talents, and |