were Russia to transmit piastres, as other "nations do. A thousand piastres would "cost but six roubles to transport, and the "returns would be made by water; for "the Selinga is navigable even to the "frontiers of China. It may be descend"ed as far as the lake Raykal, where "the Argoun is entered, and thence in "the Jenissey to Jenniseysk, where there is a land-carriage of 100 wersts to Ket; and by that river, the Irtis and the Tobol, the frontiers of European Russia are reached. "This road is much used. Thus among "the nations of the globe, there are many communications altogether independent "of the ocean-Let us now enquire "what are the articles of merchandize "which might be made tenfold dearer at "the good pleasure of the Lords of the "Ocean. Let us begin with coffee. All "who have been at Venice these ten years or more, know that nothing is drunk there "but the coffee of Arabia; dearer, it is "true, than the coffee of the Islands, but it "also pays an enormous contribution to the Beys of Egypt. Passing by Aleppo, Or"fa, Ergerom, and taking the road of Suez "to Trebizonde, it would amount to 1,200 66 cepted, there are few Asiatic articles "which cannot in time be brought into Europe through Russia, and this Russia itself "is, during half the year, an ocean, being "covered with water in the form of snow. "All the horses which cannot then be employed in the labours of husbandry, may be used in the transport of goods, and that at a very cheap rate. In summer, num"berless rivers, bearing their waters into the Volga and the Caspian Sea, shew Rus"sians the direction they ought to give to "their activity. It is beyond a doubt, "that England consumes for its marine a great mass of products, and has hitherto given Russia advantages which she can expect from no other commercial nation; "but if the menace of Mr. Cobbett were "put into execution, Russia, though she 66 might lose at first, would perhaps be a "gainer in the end."Now (addressing myself to this foreign editor), first of all you suppose, Sir, the toll duties of Germany removed, in order that Russia may receive her cloth from Holland; but, how are they to be removed? By the power of Napoleon, I suppose; for the Emperor of Russia will not be permitted to meddle in the affairs of Germany; and, for whatever good Napoleon does Russia in this way, it is not to be doubted, that, in some way or other, he will receive an equivalent; so that, upon the supposition that it is possible for Russia to receive her clothing through Amsterdam, this equivalent will have been something forced from her by the maritime power of Eugland. But, have you really considered the cost of transporting heavy and bulky goods two thousand miles by canals, and, in part, land carriage? I can know nothing of the prices of carriage of this sort upon the continent of Europe; but, I am able to come at a pretty correct judgment by comparing the canal and land charges here with the charge of sea freight. The expence of conveying goods by the canal from Liverpool to London, a distance of 200 miles, is more than half as much as that of conveying the same goods from Philadelphia to Liverpool; and, a land carriage of 60 miles, in England, is equal in expence to this canal carriage of 200 miles. Now, Sir, I am not casily to be made be "from the Indus to the Caspian Sea. Su-lieve, that either the canals or the roads be gar, candied after the manner used in "China and Egypt, might be sent these 1500 wersts without having its price dou"bled, I mean, the original price, which is "exceedingly low. The camel costs abso lutely nothing to maintain, and hence it "happens that transports may be made in "Asia very cheap. Finally, spiceries ex tween Amsterdam and Petersburgh are bet ter than they are in England; I am satisfied, that the risk, including damage in lading and unlading, is as great, if not greater, inland than by sea; and though labour may posi tively be cheaper upon the continent than it is here, relatively it cannot be cheaper, for labour, in all its branches, will bear an exact proportion in price; if canal carriage be cheap at Amsterdam, so will sea carriage; and, therefore, my comparison is quite a sufficient guide for my judgment. Supposing, then, your canal at Brzesc finished instead of begun, and allowing that those streams," of which you speak, have the extraordinary quality of ascent as easy as the descent, you will find, I believe, that only one hundred miles of your inland carriage will amount to more than sea freight from Amsterdam to Petersburgh; I leave you to calculate what will be the relative amount of two (perhaps I should say three) thousand miles of inland land carriage. Besides, Sir, where are the people to come from to carry on this traffic; it would, I should suppose, require one half of the labouring population of the places, through which the goods would pass, to work the barges and waggons.As to the empty waggons, which the Dutch merchant would find at Odessa, the owners of them must be of a very singular taste, a taste quite peculiar to the farmers of the Ukraine, if they will carry his goods for less than fifty times as much as it would cost to transport them the same distance in a ship. Of this trade between Holland and Asia Minor, however, it is not necessary to our purpose to say much; but I think there can be little doubt, that, if Russia were shut out from the ocean, which we have it in our power to accomplish, her supply of woollen cloth would soon become such as to reduce her to the use of her furs, in which state her millions of subjects might, perhaps, be as happy as they now are; but, the change woold, I am fully persuaded, give an entire new cast to her character as one of the great nations of Europe.- -We do not, according to your opinion, hold the keys of China against Russia. Why, to be sure, China and Russia are joined by intervening lands. They are upon the same continent; and, if the lands join, as some contend, at the northern extremity of the world, and there be but one continent, we do not, in this sense, hold the keys of the passage between Russia and Cape Horn; but, if we are able to prevent Russia from receiving any goods from China by sea, it appears to me that the keys are completely in our hands; for, as to the conveying of goods of bulk, eight or ten thousand English miles along rivers and through deserts, the notion is too ridiculous to be seriously entertained. Besides, it seems that Dollars are necessary in a traffic between Russia and China, and you recommend the transmitting of Dollars; but, where, in the case supposed, will you get the Dollers? You must dig them cut of your snows; for, we shall, by the use of our maritime power, prevent you from receiving any from America. The coffee, which you are to receive from Arabia, may be better than that of the West Indies; but, that you will be able to drink it as cheap as it is drunk at Venice, appears to me quite incomprehensible. You admit, that, in its way to the confines of Russia it must experience a land carriage of 1,200 wersts, or 900 English miles; and, supposing you had camels to carry, which, according to your account, cost nothing to keep, the drivers, I presume, would cost something. But, you have no camels there. The carriage, over the 900 miles must be by the means of horses, and, unless the roads in that country are much betterthan they are in England (which is not very probable, I think), each pound of coffee would, in this part of the carriage alone, receive an additional cost of one shilling and sixpence sterling. In short, what with carriage, damage, loss and waste, coffee, at St. Petersburgh, brought from Arabia, would be nearly as dear as gold-dust. --I am not, observe, supposing, that it would be any injury to the people of Russia if the Frenchified part of the nation were to be totally deprived of coffee, which is of no real use to any body. But, the case is quite different with respect to cloth, and also with respect to sugar, which, though it can be done without, is not only useful, but is, in some cases, almost a necessary of life. I will say nothing about the prime cost of sugar on the Indus; I will suppose it to be got there for nothing; and that a disposition and ability to raise it and give it away would increase with the demand for it; and, then, my opinion is, that each pound of sugar would cost more than a guinea before it arrived at St. Petersburgh. Let the camels live upon the air, or upon nothing, and let them cost nothing to obtain, still camels must have drivers, and those drivers must have food and raiment; and, as to "all the horses of Russia" being employed during the winter in the transport of goods, what are the Russians to do for that fuel, which, during the winter months, they employ those horses in providing? Be assured, Sir, that the Russians as well a the English, keep as many horses as they want for their present purposes and no more. Besides, if the horses are sent upon long journeys from home, in winter, they must be well fed; there must be drivers here too, and they must be fed and cloathed for the journey; all which, it seems to me, you must have completely overlooked. The fact, indeed, that you state, relative to coffee, to wit, that it comes nearly their way, into the Atlantic Ocean, to assist, I suppose, in effecting that famous object, "the liberty of the seas;" but, they will rot in the Tagus, and their crews will be buried upon its banks, or they will come to augment that power, which you are so desirous to destroy. If ever you, by any unlucky accident, cast your eye upon our English news-papers, you will see what a war there is between the selfish factions that are contending for the sway over us, and, in their mutual recriminations, you will be shocked at the abuses, corruptions, aud oppression which that factious war endangers; but, you will deceive yourself, if you suppose, that the people of England, in their great and just hatred of their internal enemies, have lost those feelings, which they ought to entertain against their enemies from without; and, Sir, I can assure you, that the unanimous feeling with respect to the hostility of Russia is that of contempt, while every man amongst us, who reflects seriously, and who is swayed by no selfinterested motive, hesitates not to declare, that a total breaking off of all connection with Russia, would be an event auspicious to England. It is not, Sir, upon the mart at St. Petersburgh, or at Batson's-coffee house in London, that you hear the sentiments of the people of England, from whom the persons who assemble at these places have an interest wholly distinct, not to say directly opposite. The great sentiment of the people, is, that, let come what will come, our rights upon the seas ought to be maintained; and you will set, Sir, that, in spite of all the foreign combinations against us, in spite of all the workings of our domestic factions, this sentiment of the nation will always prevail. as cheap to those who use it at the extremity, Your ships have, some of them, found of the Russian empire, as to those who use it at the port were it is first landed from on shipboard, would silence all my objections, did not my observation lead me to conclude, that you must have been greatly misinformed upon this point. For, in America, the price of all articles of foreign growth bears an exact proportion to the distance of the place where they are consumed from the place where they are first landed. Salt, for instance, which costs half a dollar (half a piastre) a bushel at Philadelphia, will cost about a dollar at Lancaster, two dollars at Carlisle, and so on, till, in the settlements over the Aleghany mountains, it costs a guinea, or, perhaps more, a bushel. Indeed, it mut necessarily be thus; and, therefore, you will forgive me, if I take it for granted, that you have been misinformed with respect to the price of the coffee, consumed at the extremities of the Russian Empire. To come, now, to some more general observations, I cannot help perceiving, that you, at every sentence, betray your want of confidence in the ability of Russia to avoid feeling the blow, which England, were her statesmen of my mind, would give to that aspiring and encroaching empire. I know, that it is not in our power to hurt the people of Russia; they would be as well, and better, without commerce, for very little cloth or sugar falls to their share; but, we have it in our power to annoy their rulers, and keep then confided within their former limits. It has been owing to the folly of England, that Russia has penetrated into Germany and Turkey. She cannot, all at once, drive you back again; but, she can forbid you to how your face upon the ocean; to render Petersburgh, if not a swamp, at least, a set of laucs wherein for cattle to graze; and this, were her statesmen made of the right sort of stuff, she would resolve to do, thereby giving an awful example to those, whose envy or maliguity have led them to conspire together for the audaciously avowed' pur. pose of undermining her maritime power, and of reducing her to a state of humiliation and dependance. It was well becoming of you, 'indyed, to assemble with Americans, in that saraecity of Petersburgh, to celebrate the 4th of July, and to toast" the liberty AMERICAN STATES.The present week is rich in American news.A notion had been made in the Congress, on the 18th of November, respecting money in the American funds, belonging to our late Lord Chancellor, the noble Baron Erskine of Clackmannan. Also a report respecting the affair of the Chesapeake frigate; and a bill had been introduced relative to the defence of the harbours against our ships of war. But, first of the Baron of Clackmannan's money; and here I shall quote from the Morning Chronicle of the 28th of last month, lest I should fall into error. City of Washington (place where the Congress meet), 18. Nov. 1807. Yes"terday the honourable Mr. Lyon stated, "in the House of Representatives, that he wished the galleries cleared and the "doors closed, bolted, and barred, as he "had some highly important matters to "communicate. The House having grati"fied his wishes, he observed that Mr. Erskine, the British Minister, had re"cently transferred Stock, possessed by "his father to a large amount in the Ame"rican Funds, and in consequence proposed the following Resolution, That provision ought to be made by law, forbidding all transfers of right of action, " and all monies, and other property, either “real or personal, to or by any subject of "the Crown of Great Britain; and also forbidding any Citizen or Resident of the "United States paying any debt or demand to any such subject.' -What a shame, Mr. Lyon! Want to stop; to hold in hand; to sequestrate, and, perhaps, finally, to confiscate, the Baron of Clackmannan's monies! Monies, which, as he has often modestly told the world, he had, during so many years, been gaining from the people of England, at the English bar! But, thanks to the foresight and sagacity of Mr. Erskine, the son of the noble lord, who is also our minister plenipotentiary in the American States, your cruel project was rendered of no effect; and, how fortunate it was, that this gentleman happened, by the late ministry, to be thought the very fittest person to be sent in that capacity to America; for, if he had not been upon the spot to watch the motions of the Congress, all these monies might have been lost.- -But, how will Mr. Erskine get these monies home now? The transfer must have been made into American hands; hands which, in such cases, are very apt to draw up close. Supposing the monies to come, they must come in bills of exchange upon London. The bills may, or may not, be good. Other monies will be in the same situation. Bills must be had. They will be greatly above par, that is to say, more monies must be given for them than will be paid for them in London; and people must not be very scrupulous as to the goodness of the bills. Faith, the monies are in a perilous state; for, as will be perceived by Mr. Lyon's motion, there was a thought of forbidding Americans to pay any debt or demand to an English subject; and, if a law of this sort should finally pass, the monies, though transferred, will be just as far from the reach of Baron Erskine of Clackmannan as they were before the transfer took place. -It is said, indeed, that Mr. Lyon's proposition was received with marks of general dissent; and, that it was the opinion of most of the members, that, "such a step, "at this time, was improper;" but it is not said, that any one objected to the measure, as one that, in no case, and at no future time, ought to be adopted; and my opinion is, that, unless we instantly send a maritime force upon the coast of America, sufficient to blockade the mouths of the great rivers, it will be adopted; and, if once they lay hold of the monies, farewell monies; for the duty of re-imbursing forms no part of their decalogue.All this is known to the agents of Englishmen, who have money in the American funds, as well as it is to me; they will, therefore, lose no time in selling out, and sending home the money in bills of exchange; and, most pat to their purpose, they will find an abundance of people ready to draw bills, especially if things should wear a warlike aspect; for, then, the drawers will have nothing to dread from protests and damages. Exclusive of funded property, the American States are now always about twelve millions of pounds sterling in debt to England, Ireland and Scotland included; let any one judge, then, what a chance the monies in question stand of reaching their owners in England. Baron Erskine's monies will, perhaps, come home with trifling deductions; but, it is not every fund-holder, who has a son there to watch over his monies, and a son, too, so gifted, and withal in a situation that necessarily gives him priority of knowledge, as to the wishes and intentions of the persons there in power. What a lucky thing it was, that the Baron's son was so situated!There are people, I know, who will inquire into the motives whence the noble Baron might be induced to deposit such large sums in the American funds, and who, with an affectation of profundity, will go about to trace such deposits, in the hands of a foreign nation, to their probable political effects; but, I shall not imitate these frigid philosophers. Having stated the facts which have already transpired. and hazarded a few conjectures as to others that will soon transpire; having considered the thing merely in the way of trade, I shall leave these deep-sighted philosophers to inquire and to trace, as long as they please.I should now proceed to remark upon the reports and the bill before-mentioned, and to shew the partiality, the insincerity, and falshood, contained in the former, and folly of the latter. There are also some Congress speeches, which would merit exposure; but, I have not now room; for, it would be greatly censurable not to do ample justice to all these.The people in the State of Massa chusetts' Bay are, I perceive (in November) beginning to cry out against the non-importation act, which was to go into effect in the middle of this month. I said the people of New England (Massachusetts', New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island) would never suffer themselves to be sacrificed to the frenchified partiality and vindictiveness of the Southern States; and, I am morally certain that they will not. They represent the non-importation act as impracticable; they know it cannot be enforced ; and, if it could, they would not submit to its provisions.- -There is one foolish fellow in the Congress, who talks about conquering Canada, Nova Scotia and Jamaica. The New-Englanders laugh him to scorn; and, to be sure, he is a sad madman. This quality in him is well known. They used to have an alliteration about him: "Red"beaded Randolph rose, ranted, and roar'd." I forget the rest of the couplet; but, I remember, that it was excellently descriptive of his person, character, and manner. quer Jamaica! The New Englanders bid him remember, that England has some ships of war there, and they significantly hint, at the fate of the Chesapeake. They are a sensible, cool, and honest people, and they know that their government is in the wrong. 66 Con The Congress has been passing laws for establishing a cannon-foundery, for making powder magazines, for making fortifications, and for raising soldiers and sailors. I think I see one of the New England members coming from a sitting of this sort, laughing to himself, and saying, "I wish my head may never ache, till those laws are carried into effect." It would be impossible, without exciting a commotion, to raise any cosiderable part of the money necessary for such purposes. But, the "New Amphyctionic Council" loves to talk big. With what big talk did it vote 100,000 dollars, for the purpose of erecting a tomb to the memory of Washington! After taking time to cool, it reconsidered the matter; it reduced the sum to 50,000; at the next cooling, it reduced it down to 20,000, or £4,500, and, after all, not a farthing was expended, and the General's body, which, in consequence of a vote of Congress, had been asked and obtained from his widow, is, I believe, to this day, lying under an ill-shaped heap of boards in the wooden building, with their usual disgusting vanity, they call their Capitol. All these warlike laws are, like this vote about Washington, intended for foreign | effect; they are amongst the means, which they are employing to bully us out of our wits and our rights; to hunible us; to break us down to the views of the maritime confederacy in Europe; to glut upon us that vengeance, which has been engendered in their hearts by the circumstance of our being able to exist a great nation separated from them. Let no Englishman be cajoled by the insinuations, contained in their speeches and reports, that it is our rulers that they hate, and not us. They hate England; England in particular; they hate Scotland next, and like Ireland tolerably well. Of this, proof upon proof will appear in their speeches and their news-papers. They hate the English most, because they think, that they are best off; and they like the Irish, because they think, that the Irish hate the English. They care not who rules us, or how we are ruled, so that we do but suffer; so that misery alight upon our persons, and disgrace upon our name. And is there, then, one of English birth, a wretch so unnatural as to love them? Is there one so criminal as to wish success to their endeavours? --At the same time, that they are, in their usual boasting strain, talking of prepa rations for war with us, they are full of apprehensions of a revolt in their newly acquired territory of Louisiana, where a paper, printed in the French language, openly calls upon the people, to remember, that they are Frenchmen. To suppose, that they can collect taxes from the States upon the Missisippi to carry on a war, which, by the sole means of two of our frigates, must depopulate those States, is madness equal to that of Randolph. In short, they touch the crisis of their fate; for, if they proceed to new acts of insolence, and if our ministers have only common sense, the country is, in the course of two years, divided into three or four separate sovereignties.-I do not wish for this. There are many valuable people in the country. I wish not to sce them harrassed and torn to pieces. But, if they will have war with us, or insist upon seeing us degraded, war let them have, and let it be war once for all. The very circumstance of their wishing to retain our seamen is proof of their malignity towards us. They can do without our seamen; but, they know that we want them to defend ourselves against France, and for us to be able to make that defence, they do not wish to see. This is the evident motive, by which they are animated, and what more do we need in proof of their maliguant, though cowardly, hostility.--In my next, I shall return to the subject, which, of all others, is the most important at this time, The Congress must be followed, step by step; all their threats and their boasts must |