The voice of freedom. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1839-1848, 1848-05-25
From the National Intelligencer.
THE NEW ROUTE TO CHINA

THE NEW ROUTE TO CHINA.
We place to-day in our columns State
paper to which we invite the attention of our
readers, as not only valuable but highly in
terestng. 1t is the Report to the House OF
Representatives, by Mr.. King, Of Georgia, on
Il system of steam communication with China,
| by way of Chagres, Panama, Monterey OF
California, and thence to Shanghae, in China,
! by way of the Fox Islands and the cluster OF
Japan. This track is, it seems-as our rea-
ders will be surprised to fnd-that which
offers the shortest course of navigation from
Panama to the Celestial Empire; because the
route in question comedies with what geog-
raphers call the arc Of "a great circle .
drawn through the two points Of Panama and
Shanghae Now, as the skilful paper Of
Lieut.. Maury, appended to Mr.. KS report,
will explain, and as indeed nautical science
has long understood, it is by the great circle
that one must sail when he would pass, by
the shortest distance, from one to another Of
two places, neither on the same meridian
nor both on the equator. Accustomed as we
are to judge Of the relative position of points
on the earth by the fiat surface of maps, not
the true figure of the globe, we are deceived );
nor would it occur, unless to man of sci
ence, that, to pass most directly from one to
the other of the stations spoken of, instead of
false straight line such as we naturally
figure to ourselves on map, we must pur-
sue a great curve; which great curve would,
in this instance, conduct us for the trne course
IL China from where VIC must cross the
American isthmus, until we shall build a
railroad from the Mississippi to the Pacific,
by a strange apparent deviation away up the
western coast vi America TO about Monterey,
and thence across the North Pacific, by the
track now described.
1t will be recolected that we had, more
than year since, the pleasure Of submitting
to our readers a former Report from Mr.
King, the beginning of that system of steam
communication and defence of which what is
now proposed makes the complement. The
Atlantic part of it was soon after author
lied by an act of Congress, and has been
carried into effect by the establishment of
line of Government steamers to Europe, al
ready in motion or on the stocks, while
others are about to begin plying to Chagres,
and a third line Oo pass regularly from Pa
mama up the western coast Of our continent
to Oregon) has been contracted for. 10
complete the wide system Of communication
then designed, the portion brought forward
was yet wanting as the last link in this great
commercial and political chain. 1t was al
ready projected and even promised; but, for
its safe construction, information as to its
great object (the China trade) was to be
collected; and this was to be carefully sought,
not merely in Great Britain, but as far as
China itself-the statistics Of all whose COM
merciul exchanges were to be ascertained in
order to form Just estimate Of the possbili-
ties of the trade which we might open with
that great populous empire, by means of the
far more rapid and regular intercourse to be
accomplished through this agency Of steam
The highly encouraging and interesting re-
suits of these inquiries will be found embodi-
ed in the earlier part Of the present Report,
and have shaped-in the main soundy, we
think, though very brilliantly-its conclu-
illusions.
Our growing establishments on the Pacific
we may say, indeed, with less than the
usual violence of our favorite national figure
of Anticipation, our rising empire on that
great sea, points us not only to the measures
already taken for connecting that remote re-
gon with us by what can alone effect it (the
quickening power of that vanquisher of dis.
lance, steam) but to a new avenue for that
trade to China and Japan, to which Oregon
and California will have a very far easier
access than any other countries inhabited by
a white race. That shore is indeed so obvi-
ously the destined seat and entrepot of all
our future commerce with the land of teas
and silks that it already justities, to the ex-
pectaton of great part Of our people, the
gigantic enterprise of a railroad across
wastes and deserts of about fifteen hundred
miles. The report, therefore, considers, first
of all, the present state of the general trade
with China and our own share in it, 1t then
proceeds to show, out of English Parliament
tary documents, that Britain and ourselves
are the great, but as yet unequal competitors
for that trade that, however, we are rapidly
gaining ground in this rivalry This pro-
gressive transfer Of business is traced to
definite and permanent cause, the fact that
England does not possess the elements for
fair and therefore permanent interchange
with China; so that, from her constantly
draining that country of specie, her trade,
even without any rivalry, must extinguish
itself; while the United States, on the con-
trary, do possess all the necessary elements
for equal exchange of products with these
Galatians, as old Marco Polo calls them-these
children of the Light of the Universe, as
they style themselves; for they are, like
ourselves, a modest nation not very repub-
lican perhaps, like us and France but then
God in granting SO many other sources of