Weekly national intelligencer., 1850-05-11
TO THE EDITORS.

GENTLEMEN: constant reader OF your paper
is much surprised to find in the Congressional de-
bates on the ntermnable subject of slavery, asser-
,ions, not unirequent that the country Is in state
of prosperity.
Will YOU permit . locker on in Vienna" to
state few facts suggestive OF the question IN what
our national prosperity at present consists
Is it to be found in trade to California, which,
including outfits capital and cargoes cent amounts
10 SAC, 900 900? The cargoes TO lose on an aver
age fifty per cent. Of their cost, and where from
eight hundred to one thousand vessels have gone,
most of them 10 remain useless and IN state OF
decay?
Is our prosperous condition shown by the facts
that we are sending our stocks to Europe at the
rate of $sO0,OOO per week, in addition to all our
shipments of grain, hreadstuts, provisions, cotton
RICE and tobacco, while exchange is selling in New
York at 81 to 81 per cent to pay for vastly re-
dundant importation OF iron and OF dry-goods, at a
time when most Of our iron furnaces are forced out
of blast and our cotton mills working short time or
shutting ups
Were fre:ghts ever so depressed as they now are
and does our shipping interest show prosperous
condition when, notwithstanding the new trade open
10 California shipowners are losing money!
1t is also a notorious fact that home trade is
much diminished. Traders TO the interior COM
plain of grea. falling off il the demand for goods
of every description, doubtless arising from the
paralyzatio Of our industry
Have we any better prosperity in the future,
when the debates in the British Parliament show
that wheat at the Baltic ports is abundant, and that
it can be and is imported into England at 3Os. per
quarter delivered there price that will not nett
more than about so or 80 cents per bushel of so
pounds
From Chill, too, our Consul writes, contracts
have been made there by company to supply Ca.
lforna with -four to meet the entire demand at
prices much lower than could send il thither, if
railroad existed across the lsthmus.
While this is the state of our agricultural, CON-
mercal, and manufacturing interests and prospects,
our banks are expanding the currency, our stocks
rising above their real value, and the spirit of spec
ulaton in them increasing. .....
The only apparent prosperity is found in the ad-
vanced price OF cotton, arising, however, from great
deficiency, probably six or seven hundred thousand
bales, in the last crop.
OF course the cry is getting up in the Locofoco
papers that the Wings are at work at panic max
ing; but facts stubborn things, and they who
believe the assertion that the country is in pros
porous condition because of our heavy imporlatons
and the apparent plenty of money, will be wofuy
deceived when the reaction shall come-as come it
essuredly ciu, unless measures taken to avert
it, We have now that state of things which produced
The ruin experienced in 1887. 1t is falsely called
. freetrade; - legacy left US by the Polk admin
stration, for which we are in the main indebted to
Robert j. Walker, whose report from the Treasury
Department was so gratifying to the British House
of Lords that they lauded the skies and caused
i, to be printed. Mr. Buwer too it appears, is much
pleased with the present state of the iron business.
No comment is necessary upon the solemn facts
here stated all known to every well informed mer-
chan, and trader. If they doubted, let COM
nittee be appointed to examine into the state of the
country, with power to send for persons and papers,
and then some useful legislation may be hoped for
instead of consuming the greatest part of the ses
sion of Congress in speeches for Buncombe, upon
subject which could be at once satisfactorily set
tied if patriotic spirit had any influence in our
National Councils. RETIRED MERCHANT.