The Sun.
London, England, 1845-10-03 00:00:00

BUENOS AYRES.

The folllowingis an extract of a letter just received by the
brig Baronet, Capt. Scotland, arrived off Falmouth on Mon-
day, from Buenos Ayres, and dated July 12, 1845 :-
1' We regret: to say that no progress has been made
towards a settlement of the question relative to the war on
the other side of the river. It is understood that the Go-
vernment of Buenos Ayres will not enter into any arrange-
ment for that purpose unless in its own way, and by no
means in the way England and France wish. It is also
pretty generally believed that measures will be taken to
force the Government into their view; but the effect of such
measures cannot be speedy (still less decisive) for a long
time, unless some forces be brought to bear which do
not at present exist in the field of action ; naval
forces alone can only act by blockading and cutting
off communications. To proceed in that way only might
require years to obtain the desired end. In the meantime
British and French persons and property will be in great
danger, and commerce stopped altogether. When Sir Robert
Peel said, on the 4th and sth of April last, in the House, that
there would soon be six vessels of war in this river, a force
fully equal for the protection of British persons and pro-
perty, he said what he did not understand, and it only shows
what gross ignorance eXists in high places relative to these
countries.
" How are vessels or their crews to protect persons or pro-
perty even in this city, much less in the open country at least
100 or 200 miles from the:coast, surroundedrby natives? How
can merchants embark their goods or effects with an opposing
force on shore ?
" There are now at least seven or eight vessels of war—
British, in the river, viz. :—Eagle and Curaeoa, frigates;
Firebrand and Gorgon, steamers; Comus, sloop; Racer,
Acorn, and Satellite, brigs."

THE MINES of LAKE SUPERIOR

(From the New York Tribune.)
From the south shore of Lake Superior, about half
way of its great length, stretches some. fifty miles north-
ward a broad and rugged promontory, terminating in
K eewenaw (or lieewenon) Point, near lat. 48 deg., or
almost in the centre of the lake. On the west
shore of this promontory, and not far from the Point,
h Copper Harbour, around which is the most ap-
proved mineral region of Lake Superior, stretching
westward some thirty or forty miles to the river
Ontonagon, the only considerable or navigable
stream in that quarter. This is not, of course, the full
extent of the mineral region ; for the great Copper
Bock itself was brought from a place much farther in-
land, on a branch of the Ontonagon, and promising veins
of ore are known to exist a hundred miles back from
the lake, on the summits of the Porcupine Mountains.
Silver is said to have been found in good veins near the
banks of the Ontonagon, some 30 to 50 miles inland
(where the stream, having taken its last pitch, begins to
be navigable) ; while even gold is said to have been
found on a location considerably east of Keewenaw

rant.

All these, however, are matters on which our infor- •
mation is imperfect, while our faith in some of them is
moderate. That there is silver in this region, is intrin-
sically probable and sustained by much concurrent tes-
timony ; that it has yet been found in such quantities
and positions as to justify and reward the outlay required
to mineit, we do not know. The gold report reaches
us still more vaguely. Another season will probably
solve many doubts.
Rich as are the copper ores of many localities, it is
the safe presumption that all profitable mining for them
must for some time be confined to a narrow section bor-
dering the lake or approached by some of its bays and
inlets. This metal is too bulky in proportion to
its value to warrant a very extensive land trans-
portation in the crude form of the ore, while the
process of smelting it is so costly, tedious and
difficult, that we do not know where it is now
performed in this country. We understand that smelting
works are now in progress of erection near Boston,
at Pittsburgh, Pa., and on the Hudson near this
city, the last with more immediate reference to the
copper product of Cuba. Hitherto most of the copper
ores mined in this country have been smelted
in England. We trust this is now near its end.
The difficulties of milling copper, at any considerable
distance south of Lake Superior, can hardly be appre-
ciated by those not familiar with the country. The sur-
face is remarkably rugged and broken, often rising
steeply into hills from the very waters of the lake, with
higher hills close behind them, and so, interspersed
with swamps and morasses, back to the mountains
which part the tributaries of the Superior from
those of the Mississippi. The aspect is so
bleak (the latitude that of Quebec), and the soil so
sterile; that a settlement of it for any other than
mining purposes is out of the question. The miners of
the interior must make their own roads, where making

them is no holiday matter, and must purchase all their
forage, as well as provisions, in a region where the price
of neither can be low. In due time, if the mineral re-
gion of Superior half justifies the sanguine expectations
it has awakened, there will be good roads and railroads
to all the richest developments. At present, those con-
siderably inland, if merely of copper, must generally
remain undisturbed, though shingled with permits, ex-
plorations!, discoveries, leases, scrips, and sundries.
The mines now being worked are within a mile of the
lake, where its coast is thickly dotted with harbours.
The shore is so bold and the harbours so sheltered that
vessels laden with provisions, implements, &c., have
safely run up within a few feet of the land, put out a
plank and rolled their barrels and packages on to the
dry ground, while the streams all around (the Ontona
gon alone excepted) so utterly forbid dm id .a cf navi-
gation that not even a bark canoe can be forced up their
rocky and precipitous beds a hundred yards from the
lake, if at all. The timber on the coast is all pitch-pine,
white, cedar, &c., but a mile inland generally commences
the hard-wood, consisting of sugar maple, &c. This
region is not heavily timbered.
We, hear that one small propeller steam-boat has
already been launched on the lake, and another (the
Julia Palmer) will soon be. This will bring the mining
region practically a week nearer the world, for the voy-
age from the Sault St. Marie to Copper Harbour (some
200 miles) is generally a tedious one in the small sail
vessels of Superior, against the habitual westerly winds
of that region. Though averaged at four or five days,
it has quite often taken treble five—its uncertainty being
a part of the mischief. Hereafter it will be made in
some twenty-four hours, or two days at farthest.

HOW TO IMPROVE THE CONDI
TION OF THE LABOURING CLASSES.

The following extracts are from a pamphlet with this
title, by E. D. Davenport, Esq. Many of the facts men.
timed in this small work are so evident, that it is need-
less to add any comment :
" We now come to consider what objections can be started
against improved husbandry, as a mode of enriching the la-
bouring classes ; and first the uncertainty as to what is called
or miscalled legislative protection, and the possible fall in the
price of corn. But the price of corn is being kept down al-
ready by the new laws, and especially by Canadian importa-
tions', and is likely to be still more so. The best answer that
such apprehensions can receive is by a reference to the com-
parative rents and profits in Scotland, where the farmers'
crops are so much greater than they are here, as to make the
selling puke a matter of secondary consideration. If they
can get 12/. (or six quarters of wheat at five shillings the
bushel per acre) in one year's crop, they have no great rea-
son to complain either of low prices or inadequate profit, nei-
ther do they. The language of habitual complaint, bad crops,
bad times, and want of protection, belongs to a very different
class of farmers, who are wont to rely on anything rather
than their own skill. They invoke legislative protection,
forgetting the change of circumstances which (supposing it
ever to have been defensible) now renders it needless, and
consequently still more odious to the other classes who have
long complamed of it. This change has been effected partly
by mechanical science, which produces good draining tiles at
one-third of the cost formerly paid for bad ones, besides
ploughs and other implements on improved constructions ;
with respect to draining, it is now admitted that the cheapest
as well as the most effective mode of doing it is to cut drains
four feet deep, and at thirty-three feet intervals. Secondly,
the accidental discovery of a concentrated manure which
serves all the purposes of horse or town manure, and is
brought upon the land at one-third of the previous expense
attending any equally restorative process. So long as guano
lasts the tenant may augment his crop in proportion to the
quantity he can purchase; and it has already been shown
that a ton of boiled bones upon an acre of grass land, and at
a cost of from 3/. 10s. to 4/. 13s. will double its value. With
what face, then, can the farmers or owners of such soils re-
presenting, as they do, a large portion of the north-west, as
well as other parts of England, ask for protective duties when
they have it in their power to double their means at so small
a pecuniary sacrifice ? The author's tenants (living near
manufacturing towns) have learned daring the two or three
past years that which they before doubted, that they depend
on a prosperous commerce; for the worst year they ever
encountered was that of commercial depression, when their
produce fell for want of purchasers, and protection, the re-
fuge of the idle and helpless, has long ceased to'occupy their
thoughts. The very word serves as a motto to sluggards
who confide in its fallacious promise. What think they, can
men want, whom their representative law-makers protect
irrespectively of the quantity or quality of their productions?
Therefore, they trust their soothsayers and are ruined; they
were led to expect a protection which would ensure them
80s. the quarter for wheat, and when ripe brought them only
40s. They havesince been told to expect 565., and have to
sell i:•• at 455. ' • they believe in spite of their senses in
powers which neither do, nor ought to exist. The, true
believers are everywhere discernible by unerring insignia;
you may know them afar off; rushy fields of brown and
yellow herbage, small crops, and more rags than rents bespeak
the true faith.
"Among the objections of landowners of small minds and
great prejudices to improved farming, we must not omit that
of granting long leases, by which they think they lessen
their absolute dominion over their tenants; a privilege for
which they and through them the community pay an awful
price. They prefer seeing their land half-cultivated rather
than endow the occupier with the power of voting according
to his conscience, and thereby risking (however slightly) his
dissent from his landlord. Yet without leases, or something
equivalent, capital will not be embarked in the soil, unless
the landlord has earned, as rarely happens, the entire con-
tidehce of the tenant. The rule, therefore, should be to give
14 or 19 years' leases, according to the terms offered by men
of capital, skill, and character.
" But here we do really want legislative protection, for
many landlords of entailed property ( the writer among others)
do not possess the power on some estates of leasing beyond
eleven years, and it were well if such disabilities were to a
ceitain degree at least, removed by Act of Parliament.
Rational objections therefore to the more intimate connexion
between capital and land, there are absolutely none ;—we
have hereby published the banns of marriage, of which it rests
with commerce to effect the consummation. . . - _

" The plain and obvious cause of the insufficient supply of
cheap provisions is the superabundant proportion of bad
pasture land—why is this? Simply because men of capital
are not to be found to till it properly; and until they offer
themselves, experience tells the owner that it is less destruc-
tive to his estate, to lay in bad pasture than in bad tillage,
and therefore the proportion of the latter is restricted in his
leases or agreements to such a quantity as the tenant is
likely from his means to keep in proper condition. Hence
the restrictive leases against which the half-informed raise
such an outcry, as if it were faulty or criminal in landowners
to be on their guard against the pseudo-capitalist, or real
robber, who expects to find his capital (instead of bringing it)
by ploughing old pastures till they cease to produce anything
when the tenant is pretty sure to throw up his no longer pro-
fitable holding. This is a very common case, and has among
others occurred in a notable instance to a large grazing farm
in the author's possession ; whose rule has since been to allow
old pastures to be broken up only in cases where an equal
quantity of other land is laid down with good grass seeds.
" There can be no doubt that the whole of our dairy and
grass farms are managed in such a way as to keep all con-
cerned in them in comparative poverty ; were the cattle fed
in the stalls as in Switzerland, the meadows and pastures
would form, as they do in Scotland, the exceptions rather
than the rules of farming. The whole population would
prove no more than necessary to the constant work of
manuring, cleaning, and cultivating the increased tillage, and
in gathering the enormous crops resulting from it. The la-
bourer would have no longer to complain that during severe
winters like the last the farmers will not give them employ-
ment ; in short, they would cease to be poor, or chargeable
as such- to their neighbours. It is no valid objection to this
change of system to urge the difficulty and cost of additional
cow-house ; the landowne^, who, being often a dissipater of
his own, if not of other people's money, may not be able to
build, but the capitalist would do so if a term of lease suffi-
ciently long were granted him—say 21 years.
" What, then, can Parliament do to benefit agriculture ?
Keep up an incessant cry for protection, always promised but
never granted. What is to be gained by this course ? Con-
stant warfare with the commercial classes, and a gradually
decreasing majority, now actually bearded and challenged
to prove their title to what they ask.
" Instead of this self-delusive course, would it not be bet-
ter to adopt some practical measures liable to no conflicts,
and tending to promote improvement, by inducing the more
free investment of capital in the soil? One of the first of
these steps should be the granting powers to lease lands for
terms of 14 (if not of 19 or 21) years. Who in the mean-
while will venture to take land in bad condition on specula-
tion without such guarantees?"