fore, says to our people, keep these dividends | need not feed them two months in the year. and interest at home to enrich yourselves. Why not, then, produce all the wool we use? This can be done by increasing our banking capital. New banks should be established, and located at such points as their capital was needed. Macon, Columbus, Atlanta and Griffin, four of the most important interior commercial points in the state, have not a dollar of banking capital of their own. All the interest made upon advances to buy cotton and other produce, is paid to banking institutions in other cities and states, instead of being kept where it legitimately belongs, where it is made, and where it should stay, to help to build up its own community. The next legislature should create new banks at each one of these points, as well as increase the capital of those of the city of Savannah. This is the first step in the noble and patriotic scheme of developing the resources of the state. It would be the taking care of what we made-it would be laboring for ourselves and not for strangers. Thus far, Georgia has been only a great plantation for the benefit of the Charleston banks. The completion of the Georgia, Central and Macon rail-roads, the partial completion of the Western and Atlantic road, has thus far stimulated the enterprise of our state, far beyond the most sanguine expectations of the advocates of those works. The completion of the state road to Chattanooga, the construction of a branch to Rome, and the improvement of the Coosa River, will pour the produce of Tennessee and North Alabama into our state. The construction of the south-western rail-road will give us the control of the entire products of our own state in that direction, that of Western Florida and of all Southern Alabama. The construction of the rail-road from Columbus eastward will give us the control of Middle Alabama. Through all these channels an immense amount of commerce must pour itself to enrich our state. Let us be prepared to meet it, and let not a want of means within our own state drive it into other markets in other states. Georgia must appropriate her own improvements to the building up and enriching her own people. These are some of the elements which must stimulate the enterprise of our people. But we have within ourselves elements of wealth far greater than any derived from foreign commerce. The pine lands of the state, including onesixth at least of all its territory, is now unproductive. That opens a vast field for enterprise. We consume annually many millions of pounds of wool, in coarse satinets, linseys, blankets, flannels and baizes. That wool may all be grown profitably there. Vermont finds her wool a source of immense profit. Her rigorous climate compels her to feed her sheep six months in the year; we and why not establish factories in the pine region, driven by steam power, to manufacture all the articles we need? Again, the finest beef range in the world is in the pine woods. Hides, tallow, beef, horns and bones, are items of great wealth to be drawn from that region. And no small item of commerce must be the production of turpentine itself. There is no business which promises such a return for the capital employed, as the raising of sheep and beef cattle and the making of turpentine. Energy alone is wanting to develop the immense resources of Georgia in this one respect. We consume in Georgia annually some three millions of dollars worth of leather, shoes, saddles, harness, and other manufac tures of leather. This might be supplied at home. In the middle and upper counties, within reach of the bark, tanneries might be established for the tanning of all the hides which are grown in the state; factories united for the production of shoes,harness, and the like, and thus this immense sum be saved at home. But more-we can and will manufacture for other states. This is a business which never can wear out; for, so long as the descendants of Adam have souls, they must have soles to their feet. A mistaken notion has prevailed, that our climate is not adapted to the manufacture of leather. The truth is, our tanneries have been hitherto erected by men of limited capital; they could neither afford to furnish the materials in proper quantities, nor could they afford to wait sufficiently long for the tanning of the leather. Hence the cry, the climate don't suit. Georgia is the greatest cotton growing state in the Union, and she is destined to be the largest manufacturing state, because she can manufacture cheaper and as well as any other state. It costs at least twenty per cent. upon the price of the raw material to transport it from Macon, Ga. to Lowell, Mass. This is no small advantage to start with. Then, a given number of spindles can be put in operation here, with all necessary appendages, for much less cost than a like number can be put in operation in any of the northern states, because of the difference in the value of land, water-power and buildings. They can be kept in operation for much less, because of the difference in the price of labor, provision, clothing and fuel. This must necessarily give us the advantage in the markets of the whole world; and this advantage will soon cause factories to spring up in almost every county--not to supply alone the local demand, but that of foreign markets. It will not be long-so soon as we acquire a little more skill-before we shall see Georgia sheetings, shirtings, calicoes and muslins, as common in northern, western and foreign markets, as we now find those of Lowell. Georgia in a few years will be a large exporter of all cotton fabrics. At corresponding prices, the Georgia factories must pay a profit largely increased over those of any of the northern states. Georgia has minerals of vast amount and value; and her legislature should appoint a geologist to explore and develop them. Our mountains are filled with inexhaustible beds of the very best iron ore, sufficient to supply ourselves and a large portion of our Union. In the May number of the "Merchants' Magazine" there is an article on the subject of Manufacture of Iron in Georgia, by the geologist of the State of New-York; and, after speaking of its inexhaustible supply, says: "The iron is of superior quality, resembling that made of the best hematiles in other localities. It is suitable both for foundry and forge purposes, inclining particularly to the best No. 1 iron. From the abundance both of ore and charcoal, cheapness of living and labor, and great profits in this region on store goods, the expenses of manufacture are extremely low, while the iron, both that made into castings for the supply of the country around and of the bar, are what would be considered, at northern works, remarkably high." This is suflicient inducement to capitalists to embark in this most lucrative business. Lime, coal and marble all abound throughout our mountain regions, and would prove sources of great wealth when developed, as they must be in a few years. In agricultural products no state can boast a greater variety or value. With the long staple cotton on the coast, and more than two-thirds of her whole territory adapted to the successful growing of the short staples-with her whole limits suited to the production of corn, and more than half to the successful growing of wheat, rye and barley-with a considerable part adapted to the production of sugar-and her mountains to the raising without limit the finest of winter apples and pears-Georgia has within herself a diversity of soil and climate which will amply repay the labor bestowed upon it for the production of every staple best suited to it. If the enterprise of our people is but properly directed, it will be but a few years before Georgia brands of flour will command the highest price in other states, while her superior fruits will rank without a superior in the markets even of England. Nor will the products of the dairy, in our mountain regions, prove a source of less profits to our dairy-men, than an equal capital invested in any other pursuit. These are some of the more prominent resources of Georgia, which need development, and which must amply repay the enterprise of those who engage in their development. The rail-road improvements of Georgia are obliged to give her the position of the Keystone State of the South; and their effect must be to open up new enterprises never before thought of. The man who is insensible to the future greatness of our state must indeed be stultified; and he whose sagacity will enable him to appropriate future developments to his own profit will be singularly blest! Casting the eye over the direction of our rail-roads, the city of Macon strikes it as the great central depot of the state. Situated just at the point where the oak and pine lands divide, within immediate reach of the facilities which each afford for manufacturing purposes, her citizens and those of the adjacent country, must be singularly unfortunate if she does not in a few years become the centre of a great manufacturing population, producing woolen and cotton fabrics, leather and all its manufactures, with extensive flouring mills to manufacture the wheat of a fertile region of country. We repeat the improvements of Georgia must create new and greater facilities to labor of every sort, that must diversify and increase the amount of labor-it becomes more profitable and consequently more in demand. The effect at once is the improved state of our agriculture. This ties our people to the soil, and instead of a roving population, we have one fixed and prosperous. Each branch of industry improves the other, and we advance step by step, unconscious of the approach, to wealth and fame and power. Georgia has the resources-she may develop them slowly, but yet they will surely be developed. All that our people need, is to be told what they can do, and how it should be done; and as knowledge pours in upon them, so will their energies be stimulated and aroused. Georgia need take but a lesson from the conduct of her sister, South Carolina, which, in the midst of her political vagaries, she has steadily pursued-and that has been to build up herself, and by her enterprise and capital to make her sisters contribute their share in the work. The idea may be regarded as somewhat visionary, but we hesitate not to declare a sentiment, long since entertained, that the child is now born who will see the commerce of all India and China reach the Atlantic through the improvements of Georgia! Steam power will carry the products of these countries some three hundred miles up the Sacramento River; from thence to head of navigation on the Mississippi by railroad; then by steamboats to Chattanooga, and from thence to Savannah by rail-road. If there is one spark of state pride in the Georgia legislature, the whole benefits of this immense trade the advantages resulting from our state works-will be made to account to our interests, and not to those of other states. The only link of communication now wanting to connect Savannah with China, is the railroad between the Sacramento and the Mississippi. The Federal government will construct that link in the next ten years. Look at the immense region of fertile country which will become tributary to Georgia so soon as our own road is completed to Chattanooga, and the South-western road finished! West Florida, Alabama, southern and northern Mississippi, upper Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky in part, Arkansas, northern Texas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota and western Virginia. Why then should Georgia raise cotton and hides, to be sent North to be woven, and factured, and returned through her borders to be supplied out West? Why should she not manufacture them herself, and make the profits of the transportation and re-transportation. But still more open the transportation to the Pacific, and who is there so short-sighted as not to see the inducements to our people to grow and manufacture these articles for further consumption? In despite of every obstacle, man's interests will prompt him to seek an investment the most profitable; and the position of Georgia, her location on the coast, and her facilities for reaching the West, will make her the great manufacturing emporium of the South. And she will see her benefit in so doing. Every branch of trade will receive a new impulse. The canvas of all Europe will gladden our own port. Let us be prepared to reap the benefits which this mighty change in our condition will bestow. (See Savannah.) GEORGIA-RESOURCES AND PROGRESS OF.-We were much delighted with the annexed remarks made in Congress by Mr. Stephens, one of the representatives from Georgia. They exhibit a state of things in that commonwealth, which must provoke the admiration, as it should the emulation, of every southern state. It is thus we can be respected and feared, and thus only. "Georgia was the youngest of the old thirteen states that formed the Union. At that time she was the weakest of the fraternal band. Twelve years have not yet passed since the last remnants of the aborigines were removed from her limits, and since she had complete jurisdiction over her entire domain. Of course the comparison would be with great odds against her if matched against Massachusetts, New-York or Virginia, which were wealthy and powerful communities before the infant colony of Georgia was planted in the wilderness. Boston, NewYork and Richmond, were nearly as old as Georgia now is when Oglethorpe first landed at Savannah. But notwithstanding all this, I will not shrink from the comparison, let it be instituted when and where it may. "Georgia, too, we tell that gentleman, has her beds of coal and iron; her lime, gypsum and marl; her quarries of granite and marble. She has inexhaustible treasures of minerals, including gold, the most precious of metals. She has a soil and a climate suitable for the growth and culture of almost every product known to husbandry and agriculture. A better country for wheat and corn and all the cereal plants, to say nothing of cotton and tobacco, is not to be found in an equal space on this continent. There, too, grow the orange, the olive, the vine and the fig, with forests of oak and pine sufficient to build and mast the navies of the world. She has mountains for grazing, rivers for commerce, and waterfalls for machinery, of all kinds, without number. Nor have these great natural advantages and resources been neglected. Young as she is, she is now the first cotton-growing state in the Union. Her last year's crop will not fall short of six hundred thousand bales, if it does not exceed it. She has, I believe, thirty-six cotton factories in operation, and a great many more hastening to completion one of them has, or soon will have, ten thousand spindles, with two hundred looms capable of turning out eight thousand yards of cloth per day. Her yarns are already finding their way to the markets of the North and foreign countries; and the day is not distant when she will take the lead in the manufacture, as well as the production, of this great staple. She has also her flour mills and paper mills-her forges, foundries and furnaces, not with their fires extinguished, as the gentleman from Pennsylvania said of some in his state, but in full blast. Her exports, last year, were not less than thirty millions of dollars-equal to, if not greater than those of all New-England together. She has six hundred and fifty miles of rail-road in operation, at a cost of fifteen millions of dollars, and two hundred more in the process of construction. By her energy and enterprise, she has scaled the mountain barriers and opened the way for the steam-car, from the southern Atlantic ports to the waters of the great valley of the West. But this is not all. She has four chartered universities-nay, five, for she has one devoted exclusively to the education of her daughters. She was the first state, I believe, to establish a female college, which is now in a flourishing condition, and one of the brightest ornaments of her character. She has four hundred young men pursuing a collegiate course; a greater number, I believe, than any state in the Uinon in pro portion to her white population. Go, then, and take your statistics, if you wish-you will find not only all these things to be so, but I tell you also what you will not find. You will not find any body in that state begging bread or asking alms. You will find but few paupers. You will not find forty thousand beings, pinched with cold and hunger, demanding the right to labor, as I saw it stated to be the case, not long since, in the city of New-York. And when you have got all the information you want, come and institute the comparison, if you wish, with any state you please; make your own selection; I shall not shrink from it, nor will the people of that state shrink from it. Other gentlemen from the South can speak for their own states; I speak only for mine, and in her name and in her behalf, as one of her representatives upon this floor, I accept the gauntlet in advance, and I have no fears of the result of a comparison of her statistics, socially, morally, politically, with any other state of equal population in this confederacy. I know gentlemen of the North are in the habit of laying great stress upon the amount of their population, as if numbers were an index of national prosperity. If this principle were correct, Ireland should be considered one of the most prosperous countries in the world, notwithstanding thousands of her inhabitants die annually for want of food. The whole idea is wrong. That country has the greatest elements of prosperity, where the same amount of human labor or exertion will procure the greatest amount of human comforts; and that people are the most prosperous, whether few or many, who, possessing these elements, control them, by their energy and industry and economy, for the accumulation of wealth. In these particulars, the people of Georgia are inferior to none in this or any other country. They have abundant reason to be content with their lot-at least none to look to you to better it. Nor have they any disposition to interfere with the affairs of their neighbors. If the people of Massachusetts, New-York or Ohio like their condition better, they are at perfect liberty to do so. Georgia has no desire to interfere with their local institutions, tastes or sentiments, nor will she allow them to interfere with hers. All she desires is to let others alone and to be let alone by others, and to go on in her own way in the progress she has commenced, prosperous and to prosper. "The six hundred and fifty miles of railroad now in operation, to which I have alluded, were built by Georgia capital. One hundred and thirty-six miles, from Atlanta to Chattanooga, on the Tennessee River, which is one of the greatest monuments of the enterprise of the age, was built by the But her public debt is only a the state. little over eighteen hundred thousand dollars, while that of the State of New-York is over twenty millions, besides the fourteen millions owed by the city alone; and the debt of Pennsylvania is forty millions of dollars. The bonds of the State of Georgia are held mostly by her own people. You do not see them hawked about in northern or foreign markets at a depreciation. But they, as well as the stocks and securities of the private companies, are held mostly by her own citizens, and are commanding premiums at home." GEORGIA - TOPOGRAPHY OF MIDDLE GEORGIA.-We take the following from a contribution made by Dr. Pendleton to Fenner's Medical Reports of the South: That region of country properly known as Middle Georgia, and to which this paper relates, is bounded on the south by an isothermal line, running diagonally through the state, about 30° south of west from Augusta to Columbus, varying but little in a direct route through Milledgeville and Macon. The northern line may be considered as running parallel with this from Elbert county on the Savannah River, through Walton, to Heard county on the Chattahoochee. This forms the true isother mal line between Middle and Upper Georgiathe one being suited to the production of cotton, the other almost exclusively restricted to grain. A latitudinal line running west from a point on the Savannah, would strike nearly a degree higher on the western boundary of the state; but the southern termination of the Alleghany Mountains assumes this diagonal line in Upper Georgia, and I have no doubt impresses itself on all the region below, even to the Atlantic—hence Augusta, in the east, is about as warm as Columbus in the west. This isothermal line runs directly parallel with the shore of the ocean, which seems to be conformed to the general geological aspects of the country. Thus, we perceive a granite ridge extending along the above-mentioned line between Lower and Middle Georgia, over which all the waters of the state and the adjoining states pour themselves in shoals or cataracts, and thence glide on by a gradual and easy course to the ocean. The Savannah, at Augusta, Oakmulgee at Macon, and the Chattahoochee at Columbus, all have impassable reefs, constituting these cities the heads of navigation. The same line crosses Hancock county at the shoals of the Ogeechee, and by Garnett's Mills on Buffalo Creek; and I doubt not every tributary of all these rivers presents the same shoaly appearance in running over this granite ledge, which separates the Plutonic and Metamorphic regions of Georgia from the alluvial or tertiary. No granite is found below this line to the ocean, few rocks of any kind, and no shoals of water; all is a vast pine forest, with a gray, silicious soil, abounding in tertiary fossils, mostly Eocene and Pliocene. Following the line of this Plutonic ridge, which is about fifteen miles in width, we find numerous deposits of kaolin, of a beautiful white variety, which will some day be brought into requisition for the manufacture of porcelain ware. This is, doubtless, a decomposition of sepentine or felspathic rock, which, not being able to stand the ravages of time like the everlasting granite, have dissolved to form another mineral of more value to man. In some places, as in Richmond county, these deposits form high cliffs, marking distinctly the ancient shore of the Eocene Sea, which once swept solitarily over the vast plain below. Above this ridge there seems to have been an ancient valley, now filled with metamorphic rocks, through which the rivers glide with a much more gradual descent than they do higher up the country, where another and another granite ridge rises successively, on one of which rests, in beautiful and majestic proportions, one of the wonders of the new world, the Stone Mountain of De Kalb. Beyond this ridge the culture of cotton ceases in Georgia, except in small patches for domestic use, and perhaps more extensively in the valleys of the Coosa, on the western borders of the state. The native soil of Middle Georgia is a rich, argillaceous loam, resting on a firm clay foundation. But the face of the country being hilly, and in some places semi-mountainous, much of this good soil has long since been washed into the valleys beneath, under the wretched system of agriculture at first adopted in this country. In some of the richer counties, nearly all the lands have been cut down and appropriated to tillage, a large maximum of which has been worn out, leaving a desolate picture for the traveler to behold. Decaying tenements, red old hills stripped of their native growth and virgin soil, and washed into deep gullies, with here and there patches of Bermuda grass, and stunted pine shrubs, struggling for a scanty subsistence on what was once one of the richest soils in America. The water-courses have received the same tincture of the hills, especially after heavy rains, holding in solution a large proportion of alumina and the red oxide of iron, and presenting a muddy and forbidding aspect to one accustomed to the clear, pellucid streams of many portions of our country, especially the pine regions. There are no lakes, and but few lagoons or native ponds in this region of Georgia. Art, however, has not failed to make up the deficiency in this respect, by improving many of the thousands of mill-seats on the numerous streams that water this favored region, thus forming artificial ponds enough to produce a good crop of autumnal fevers for the anxious sons of Esculapius to reap an annual harvest from. These, however, when decidedly pernicious, have in some instances been abolished by law, to the no small comfort and health of the inhabitants within reach of their deadly borders. Agriculture also has come to the aid of suffering humanity, of late years. Many creeks and marshy lands are being drained for purposes of cultivation, which adds no little to the health and wealth of the country. The improved method of hill-side ditching also is helping much to protect the soil from washing into the bottoms, and at once enrich and beautify the country. The native growth of this country is oak and hickory, interspersed with the short-leaf pine, poplar, gum, &c., all indicating a good soil. It is a little singular that when the lands are exhausted and turned out to rest, they invariably spring up with the long-leaf pine. It is accounted for on the chemical principle of rotation in crops. The first growth had exhausted all the richer elements in conjunction with the cultivation, and now no forest tree but the pine could find sufficient nourishment in the soil to cause it to spring up and become a tree; partly from the fact, that it does not require so many of the salts, but mainly because it sends its roots deep in the earth, and brings them up whence they had filtered away from the surface for ages. But this is a digression. It is unnecessary for me to say a word in regard to the population. They are strictly an agricultural people, inhabiting what is properly a rural district, and are made up of two distinct classes, the white and the black. Formerly, when the country was in its pristine strength and glory, they averaged, probably, some twenty inhabitants to the square mile. Now it is reduced to about sixteen, and in some of the older counties it has been even lower than this, but they have, in the last ten years, been showing a gradual increase. The proportion of whites to blacks is considerably in favor of the latter, especially in the lower belt of counties, where cotton is a more lucrative article of produce. GULF OF MEXICO-MILITARY AND NAVAL DEFENCES OF-In March last, (1846,) Major Wm. H. Chase, United States Engineer, published a memorial in relation to this important subject, and, although his suggestions were thought to be on too expensive a scale for the wants and resources of the country, his remarks are deserving of serious attention. We would recommend the memorial, from the great ability with which it is |