Spanish, 958; American, (United States,) 1465(b); British, 355; French, 59; Belgian, 24; Holland, 21; Hamburg, 32; Bremen, 37; Danish, 20; Swedish, 3; Prussian, 2; Russian, 1; Sardinian, 9; Portuguese, 29; Mexican, 4; Oriental Republic, 1; Granada, 3-Total 3023.

From Spain in Spanish vessels, $5,288,276 | From Hanseatic towns,

46 do. in foreign

Spanish America,......

$5,951,801

1,435,696

$7,387,497

do.

6,985 66 Denmark,.

Turkey,....

44

Italy,..

Portugal,

1,437,199 Value of imports in deposit,..... 3,357,172

$391,231 47,914

901

20,297

8,294

Grand Total.......$24,700,189

618,461

61,761

207,309

The circulation of the country has increased, in the last eight years, $6,246,788; of which $5,366,691 is in gold, the rest in silver.

(b) Of the vessels of the United States, many are of the largest class. Many also, besides the direct voyage in and out, make a coasting voyage in quest of cargo.

(c) Most of the large American ships, carrying sugar to Europe, clear for Great Britain, e. for "Cowes and a market."

(d) (e) A great part in American ships.

NOTES TO IMPORTS AND EXPports.

1. This valuation is founded on the customhouse valuations, which being fixed, are, generally speaking, much lower than the selling price, duty off. It makes no account of smuggling, which, inward and outward, is considerable.

2. It shows the commercial movement to have amounted to $50,641,972; being $3,844,307 greater than that of the year 1839.

IMPORTATION OF GRAIN AND FLOUR INTO GREAT BRITAIN. The following is a statement of the total number of quarters of each kind of grain, and cwts. of flour and meal, imported into all the ports of Great Britain, in the year ending the 5th January, 1841, showing the proportion imported and charged with duty in December, 1840, and the quantity remaining in bond on the 5th January, 1841, and also the rates of duty on foreign from the 4th of February, 1841 :

Of the flour imported in December, 1841, 107,279 cwts. were from British possessions, and of the quantity remaining on hand 115,402 cwts. are also of British colonial produce. Of the wheat remaining in bond, 2,152 qrs. only are from British possessions.

WINES IMPORTED INTO ENGLAND.

The total quantity of the various sweets, or made wines, imported from Scotland and Ireland into England, from January 5, 1839, to January 5, 1840, was 28,298 gallons; and the total quantity imported from the same countries into England, from January 5, 1840, to January 5, 1841, was altogether 26,771 gallons.

SUGAR IMPORTED INTO ENGLAND.

The quantities of sugar imported into the United Kingdom in the year 1840 were as follow, viz :-British plantation sugar, 2,202,833 cwts.; Mauritius, 545,009 cwts.; East India, 482,836 cwts.; Foreign, 805,167 cwts. Total, 4,035,845 cwts.; and the quantity retained for actual consumption in the United Kingdom in 1840 was 3,594,834 cwts. The nett revenue arising from the duties on sugar in the same year amounted to £4,449,070.

THE MERCHANTS' MAGAZINE AND COMMERCIAL REVIEW was established July, 1839. The number for June, 1841, closed the second year of the existence of this work, and completed the fourth volume. It is published monthly, at FIVE DOLLARS per annum, in advance. Six monthly numbers form a volume of nearly six hundred octavo pages, with a title page and copious index. The first four volumes, neatly and substantially bound, can be procured of the publisher, 142 Fulton street, New York, at the subscrip tion price, and the cost of binding-fifty cents per volume. As the repository of statistical information of foreign and domestic trade, commerce, manufactures, banking, etc. etc., collected and compiled from official sources, and classified in tables, it will be found peculiarly valuable as a standard work of reference.

HUNT'S

MERCHANTS' MAGAZINE.

SEPTEMBER, 1841.

ART. I.-AGRICULTURAL COMMERCE OF THE UNITED STATES.

In surveying the vast extent of our national domain, we can hardly fail to be amazed at the amount of its agricultural resources. Stretching through various degrees of latitude, and exhibiting a soil which is warmed by a temperate as well as a tropical climate, it yields nearly all the grains, grasses, and vegetables that are required for the substantial comfort of man, as well as those more luxurious fruits that administer to his tastes and tend to pamper his appetites. Taking the six states of New England, which are limited in their territory, we find that although the soil is of primitive formation, and much broken by hills and ledges of rocks, the common grains, such as rye, corn, buckwheat, potatoes, and most of the garden vegetables, are produced upon its hill-sides and in its valleys to a considerable extent, which may be much increased by improved methods of culture, although a large portion of its surplus population is annually. drained off to the more productive lands of the new states of the west. Agriculture, in this portion of our country, is not, however, prosecuted in that scientific and improved form which prevails in England, and by which the crops of that portion of Great Britain are quadrupled. The common and ordinary means which were formerly used for the cultivation of the soil, are now too generally retained; and the necessary consequence is, that the amount of agricultural produce raised is not sufficient for the sup-port of its population. In the state of Massachusetts, however, which has exceeded all other of the New England states in the point to which it has carried the agricultural interest, a better form of husbandry exists. Not only has greater attention been paid to this interest as a science, but the influence of that improvement is experienced in the greater abundance and the superiority of its crops. Passing to the state of New York, we find the advantages furnished by the interest of agriculture most signally displayed. In that wide alluvial soil, stretching away from the banks of the

Hudson to the shores of Lake Erie, the surface of the territory, throughout nearly its entire extent, is checkered with prosperous farms, tilled by an agricultural population which is probably exceeded by that of no other portion of the country in the independence and solid comfort which they enjoy a condition that is principally derived from the cultivation of the soil. In that condition, indeed, we perceive the benefits which might be diffused throughout the whole country were this species of enterprise more widely extended. The production of wheat alone in this state, yields a vast revenue to its producers; and the flour which is poured out from its mills, and the quantity of beef, pork, and other products of stock-husbandry, as well as grains and vegetables, which fill the channel of the Hudson, supply the wants of the villages upon its banks, and the great metropolis at its mouth. Passing towards the south, we reach the territory of Western Pennsylvania, cultivated with pains-taking thrift by Dutch farmers, a source of no inconsiderable wealth to the state. Arriving in Maryland, we enter upon a soil which, while it produces most of the grasses and grains of the north in as great abundance as even the state of New York, yields also the tobacco; and from that state, through Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, we have a territory which stretches away in plain and valley, inviting the labors of the plough, and giving in return, not only the vegetable products of the north, but also those great staples, rice, tobacco, and cotton.

Nor are the agricultural advantages of this portion of our territory, however great, equal to those furnished by the soil of the west. The val ley of the Mississippi, or that domain which extends from the head of Lake Superior to New Orleans, watered by about three thousand miles of that great river, spreads out a more fertile territory, as has been justly remarked by a recent French traveller,* than that of any other portion of the globe. The oak-lands, extending through Michigan to the borders of the lakes, the prairies of Illinois, the deep mould which stretches from the southern borders of the lakes beyond both banks of the Ohio, the forests of Kentucky, and the numerous states organized along the Mississippi, the Illinois, and the Missouri, from the rugged cliffs of Lake Superior to the cotton and sugar plantations of Louisiana and Alabama, develop a field for agriculture which almost bewilders us by its magnitude.

The enterprise of our countrymen, discerning the resources of the soil, has kept pace with their development, by marking out important channels of trade through which the agricultural products of the interior can be most conveniently transported to their respective markets. The long lines of canals and railroads that have been projected and partially carried out, both at the north, the south, and the west, are designed not less to provide the conveniences of personal travel, than to furnish the means of transpor tation for their agricultural products. Connecting the principal commer cial marts of our country, and making up by art what nature has left undone, these improvements, while they accommodate the public in its hours of mere amusement, have a direct tendency to stimulate the labors of agriculture by furnishing to its products convenient and rapid markets, constituting an electric chain through which will vibrate the opinions as well as the trade of the country. Added to this, we are supplied by nature with some of the noblest arteries of internal navigation that are to be

* See Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville.

found in the world, and which furnish the safest means for the transportation of articles of large bulk. The products of New England may be transported from the interior through the artificial public works to which we have alluded, that are designed to run to the navigable waters of the rivers which partially penetrate the interior, or they may be conveyed coastwise from state to state even to the mouth of the Mississippi. In New York we find the Hudson coursing, perhaps, the most densely popu lated portion of this state from Albany, its largest interior city, to the great metropolis at its mouth; while the agricultural productions of Pennsylvania and Maryland find a ready market at home, and those of the south, which are required to be exported, are provided with an ocean pathway to any port. The navigable advantages of the west are, perhaps, more extraordinary than those that are found in the eastern portion of the country. New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin, have harbors upon the great lakes which are stretched thousands of miles through the forest of our northwestern territory-a territory that is more prolific of agricultural resources than any other portion of our wide-spread empire; and when we consider the advance of population into that territory, and the measure of production which it has already attained, we cannot fail to be convinced that it will soon become, in point of strength and influence, the most important part of our republic. From the shores of Illinois we have also a continuous line of navigation through the states bordering the Mississippi, which annually pour out a vast amount of products to the great commercial mart at its mouth-the city of New Orleans. Such are the agricultural advantages of the country, and such the navigable arteries and public works which furnish channels for the transportation of its productions.

In this country extraordinary motives, certainly, are held out for the exercise of agriculture. Besides the constitution of the country, and the laws of the several states, which guaranty to all its citizens a participa tion in the national legislation, a further inducement is held out by the low price of lands. In the new states of the west, it is well known that an abundance of the most fertile soil can be procured at the low price of one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre, with the best title; a soil, too, which furnishes in great abundance most of the comforts, and many of the luxu ries of life. When to this is added the fact, that by the advance of population, and the necessary growth of the country, this soil, thus purchased at that low rate, will gradually augment in value as the settlement of the surrounding territory is increased, little additional motive could be urged for its cultivation, especially to that body of men who might linger in the large cities of our older states, dependent upon the chance opportunities of labor which might present themselves, and who would be cut off entirely from these opportunities when a sudden mercantile revulsion should, as has frequently occurred, sweep away the great bulk of the business population in one common wreck.

We perceive in the habitudes of agriculture many advantages possessed by no other form of occupation. The cultivation of the soil by its own proprietor, while attended with hardships, is, in a great measure, relieved from those vexatious cares which disturb the population of large cities. In the first place, he is not confined to the counter of a narrow shop, the attendant upon every purchaser who may enter it on business. He is not obliged to spend wearisome days and nights in toiling over a desk, and