can now be produced in England and Germany, it is equally plain that unless their tea trade was protected by the present prohibitory duties, it would, even allowing for a considerable reduction in the large profits of the Russian importers, be driven out of the field by the merchants of other nations; and that in consequence they could not afford to sell their goods at Kiachta at the present low nominal prices, nor offer competition in the supply of woollens required for the consumption of China Proper. In supplying furs and other articles, suited to the north of China, they doubtless possess advantages over other nations, which would probably secure to them that branch of the trade; but even in that, the United States might offer some competition, as in former years they sent considerable quantities to China, although that trade afterwards dwindled down to a very trifling

amoun.

It is said that a part of the tea imported at Hamburgh is smuggled into Russia, where doubtless it yields the contrabandist a handsome protit.

Regarding the other articles of Russian manufacture, sent to Kiachta, we are not possessed of sufficient information as to what description of goods they are, and the prices at which similar articles could be manufactured in the United States or England and other nations, to give any data for a calculation of what the result of a shipment would be, in comparison with those of Russia.

The rigid prohibition of opium, which has so many times been thundered forth against the "barbarians" in the edicts of the emperor of the Chinese dominions, of course extends to the northern frontier, and probably with much the same effect as that resulting from the vigilance of the authorities on the sea coast. The Russian autocrat issued an ukase to his subjects, forbidding any attempt at its introduction into China; and in their diplomatic intercourse with the Chinese court, the Russian officials take credit to themselves for excluding the drug from their caravans, thus showing themselves in a more favorable light as compared with those nations who persist in bringing it to the celestial shores.

It is nevertheless asserted that the Russian emperor is not averse to his subjects adding that to the other branches of their trade, and that opium is actually smuggled across the frontier by the Tartars who inhabit the neighborhood. We learn by a translation from a continental paper, which appeared in the columns of an English publication, that the idea of this trade was first suggested to the Russian minister of finance in 1838, by a Greek merchant, who was well acquainted with Asiatic commerce. He obtained several audiences of the minister, and by his plausible arguments gained his consent, securing to himself the privilege of transporting his opium as far as Kiachta, for twenty years, at the expense of the state; from which we may safely infer that the emperor's revenues are in some measure assisted thereby. The traffic is of course carried on with too much secresy to allow of any information being obtained by foreigners regarding its extent, and the means by which they secure the connivance of the Chinese officials, if (as is most probable,) it is carried on with their knowledge.

The Bombay Times, 1842, says, "We learn by letter from Smyrna, received by the present mail, that one hundred chests of Turkey opium have been purchased there by a Russian house, and shipped to Odessa, to be thence conveyed overland to Kiachta, and eventually smuggled across the Chinese border." If the existence of such a traffic be true, it is quite pos

sible that in the event of its becoming known to the emperor, there may one day happen a collision between the countries, the result of which may prove as momentous as that which has sprung from the late hostilities between China and England.*

Art. V. THE INVENTION OF THE COTTON-GIN:

WITH REFERENCE TO ITS EFFECT ON THE PRODUCTION OF COTTON.

THE American Journal of Science for 1832 contains a memoir of Eli Whitney, the inventor of the Cotton-Gin, which was prepared by Professor Olmsted, of Yale College. This memoir, together with some reminiscences of Mr. Whitney, by Professor Silliman, has recently been published in pamphlet form; and we trust that Mr. Sparks will soon add it to his “Library of American Biography," and thus give it a permanent place in the literature of the country.

Our object, in referring to the subject at this time, is for the purpose of embodying in the pages of the Merchants' Magazine, the appendix to the present edition of the memoir, which was prepared by D. Francis Bacon, Esq., of New York. Although that gentleman has drawn many of his facts from our Journal, it contains such concise, comprehensive, and welldigested views of the effect of the invention of the Cotton-Gin in the production of cotton in the United States, that we have concluded to republish it entire, well assured that it will be perused with interest by most of our readers.

THE EFFECT OF THE INVENTION OF THE COTTON-GIN ON THE PRODUCTION OF COTTON.

"The influence of mechanical inventions on the improvement of the human race, and the wealth of nations, is a circumstance which has peculiarly impressed the minds of practical men and of philosophic observers alike, since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Changes in the condition of society and in the intercourse of nations, far more momentous and lasting than the revolutions previously produced by political causes, have, within the last fifty years, been effected by the action of individual minds, in the development of neglected physical facts, and in the application of material agencies to the use and benefit of man. As new wants have been felt, and the needed uses of yet undiscovered powers have been made known in the progress of society, art and science have met each occasion; and the demand for new combinations of matter and motion has been continually answered by widely-various, unwearied invention.

"The application of steam to machinery, to navigation and to land carriage, the invention of the spinning-frame, and of the cotton-gin, are imposing instances of the operation of such causes, so insignificant in their inception, so immensely important in their results, to the convenience and happiness of mankind. The agency of Watt, Fulton, Stevens, Telford, Arkwright, and Whitney, in the production of the present wealth of the world, and in the development of the beforeunappreciated resources of the rapidly improving commonwealths and empires of progressive Christendom, has been greater than that of all other human causes. What may have been accomplished by government, by policy and by science, for the promotion of the general good of civilized nations, is little in comparison with

*To the writer of some excellent articles in the Bombay Times, to Mr. Macgregor's work on Tariffs, and to gentlemen in Shanghai and Hongkong, our readers are indebted for the foregoing article.-Editor.

the production of these individual minds acting wholly without the sphere of political agencies, and has been wholly subordinate and secondary to it.

"These views of the relative influence and importance of merely personal, private agency, and of national or governmental movements, would have startled the world in the last century, and would have received a contemptuous condemnation; but to the present generation, they have been made familiar by reiteration, almost to triteness.

"The increase of the production of a cheap material for woven fabrics, adapted in some degree to the use of the human race in every climate and region, is a matter of more importance to commerce, and to the interests of civilization, than may appear to a superficial observer. The supply of this primary necessity of man, (hardly less essential than that of food,) with an article capable of being substituted, to a great extent, for every other material hitherto converted into cloth, has been, during the present half-century, by far the most important element in the commercial relations of the United States and Europe,-has been the source of the largest amount of acquired wealth, and has given employment to the greatest aggregate of profitable labor. There is no parallel in history to the changes which the cotton trade has made in the direction of commerce, in the employment of mechanical industry, in the dress, habits, conveniences, and health of mankind, and in the intercourse and mutual dependence of nations. And when it is remembered, that the material was, by the invention of the COTTON-GIN, furnished to the manufacturer with the cheapness, abundance and despatch which insured these great results, it becomes manifest that the importance of this mechanism has not been overrated.

"The memoir, which this statement accompanies, furnishes some facts relating to the consequences of Mr. Whitney's invention to the growth of cotton; but the increase of the production, manufacture, and exportation of that great American staple during the years which have intervened, has created a necessity for an extended view of the statistics of the subject. The limits of the present sketch permit only an outline or abstract of the facts. It is a topic which has largely employed the faculties of commercial writers and statesmen in the United States and Great Britain, the results of whose labors may be obtained from the public documents of the American government, and from the various volumes of Hunt's "Merchants' Magazine," a periodical of great merit and value for commercial statistics of this and similar character.

"Numerous statistical tables have been published in works of this description, exhibiting the annual cultivation of cotton in the different states of the Union, and throughout the world, and also showing the amount and value of the exportations of cotton from the United States to the various countries of Europe. The influence of the cotton-gin on the increase and relative amount of American production and exportation, is thus exhibited by a statement of the growth here and elsewhere, in certain years, at fixed periods.

"Tables, exhibiting at great length all the particulars of production and export, for each year, from 1791 to the present time, are given in several articles in Hunt's "Merchants' Magazine," especially in a History of the American Cotton Trade in Vol. IV, page 201, of that work. A document prepared by the Treasury Department in 1836, in obedience to a resolution passed in Congress, presents also very ample and tabular details of the progress of the cotton trade and culture for more than forty years. The Merchants' Magazine contains also a very valuable series of articles on this subject, (by Professor M'Cay, of the University of Georgia,) presenting minute statements of the annual production and exportation of cotton during recent years. (Merchants' Magazine, Vol. IX, p. 516; Vol. XI, p. 517; Vol. XIII, p. 507.) From these, most of the particulars here given are derived; and to these and the American Almanac for 1837, and to the Annual Reports on Commerce and Navigation, prepared by the Treasury Department, the inquiring reader is referred for the complete statistics of the agriculture, commerce and manufacture of cotton.

The grand results, however, may be viewed effectively from a few points of time, selecting the statistics of certain dates, taken at random. In the year 1791,

the whole cotton crop of the United States was but 2,000,000 of pounds. In 1845, (fifty-two years after the invention of the cotton-gin,) it was more than 1,000,000,000 of pounds, (2,395,000 bales, averaging above 430 pounds.) In 1791, the cotton annually produced in the whole world was estimated at 490,000,000 lbs., of which the United States, consequently, produced only 1. In 1845, the total supply furnished in the markets of the civilized world, was 1,169,600,000 lbs., (2,720,000 bales,) of which the United States produced, therefore, more than

SEVEN-EIGHTHS.

"In 1791, the whole amount of cotton exported from the United States was 189,316 pounds, this being the first definite statement of the kind on record. Previous to that year, the growth and sale of cotton had been so trifling in amount, as to be accounted unworthy of any notice in the statistics of American commerce, or even in those of Southern agriculture. Although it is known that even in 1770 there were shipped to Liverpool THREE bales of cotton from New York, FOUR bales from Virginia and Maryland, and THREE from North Carolina-and though, in 1784, (the year after the Treaty which closed the Revolutionary War and secured the recognition of American Independence by Great Britain,) a vessel that carried EIGHT bales of cotton from the United States to Liverpool was seized in that port, on the ground that so large a quantity of COTTON in a single cargo could not be the produce of the United States,-yet there was no decisive improvement in the production or exportation of this article down to the era of Whitney's invention. And in 1792, (the year preceding the invention,) the quantity exported was even less than in 1791, amounting only to 138,328 lbs.--a decrease of 50,988 lbs. in one year. There was no indication, from 1770 to 1792, of any tendency to a large increase of the production of cotton; and however great the adaptation of the soil and climate of the South to its culture, and however strong the encouragements afforded by the extended demand and high price in Britain and on the European continent, no one, at that time, seems to have expected that this was ever to be one of the great staples and exports of the United States.

"In 1793, the year of the invention, the whole cotton crop of the United States was 5,000,000 lbs., and the total exportation 487,600 lbs. In 1794, when the cotton-gin was first extensively introduced into Georgia and South Carolina, (then the principal region of that production,) the whole crop increased to 8,000.000 lbs., and the exportation to 1,601,760 lbs. In 1800, when the machine had been thrown open to the people, without limitation, from regard to the legal rights of the patentee, the total production of cotton in the United States, during the year, amounted to 35,000,000 lbs., of which 17,789,803 lbs. were exported. In 1805, the whole production was 70,000,000 lbs., and the amount of upland cotton exported, 29,602,428 lbs.--(value $9,445,000.) In 1810, the crop was increased to 85,000,000 lbs., and the exportation of upland cotton to 84,657,384 lbs. In 1815, the whole of the United States crop was 100,000,000 lbs., and the exportation of upland cotton 74,547,796 lbs. In 1820, the whole United States crop was 160,000,000 lbs. the exportation of upland 116,291,137 lbs., valued at $22,308,667. In 1825, crop 255,000,000 lbs.-exportation of upland, 166,784,629 lbs. In 1830, crop 350,000,000-exportation, 290,311,937. In 1835, crop 475,000,000—exportation, 379,000,000. In 1840, crop 880,000,000--exportation valued at $63,870,307. In 1845, the United States cotton crop was 1,029,850,000 pounds, and the exportation of cotton 862,580,000 pounds--the domestic consumption being 167,270,000 pounds. "The recent annexation of the immense cotton lands of Texas, the abolition of the import duty on American cotton in Great Britain, and the vast rapid increase of the manufacture of cotton fabrics in all parts of the United States, are evidences of the certainty of a further increase in the production of cotton in this country. Enormous as has been the progress of this staple, from 1791 to 1845, it is destined to a yet greater extension in amount and value.

"The exclusion of East India cotton from its previous monopoly of the markets of the civilized world, from the beginning of the present century, was mainly due to the introduction of the cotton-gin in the Southern States of the American Union, which substituted the rapid operations of machinery for the tedious and costly

labor of human hands in the preparation of the crop for the use of the manufac turer. The recent attempt of the British Government and the East India Company to restore the successful production of cotton in Hindostan, have consisted largely in the introduction of American improvements, especially of "THE AMERICAN COTTON-GIN," into those provinces which are adapted to the culture. The greater che ipness of labor, and even the superior quality of the product (in the province of Dharwar) were found to avail nothing, without the advantages of American machinery.

The pecuniary advantage of this invention to the United States is by no means fully presented by an exhibition of the value of the exports of cotton, (amounting to more than $1,400,000,000 in the last forty-three years,) nor by the immense proportion of the means which it has furnished this country to meet the enormous debts continually incurred for imports from Britain and the European continent― COTTON having for many years constituted one-half, three-fifths, or seven-tenths, of the value of the exports of the Union But it was the introduction of the cottongin which first gave a high value and permanent market to the Public Lands in the southwest. The rapid settlement and improvement of almost the entire States of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and Texas, is mainly due to the enlarged production of cotton consequent upon the invention of Whitney. The States of Georgia and Tennessee have also been largely benefited by the same means, in the disposal of their domain, a vast portion of which must have remained unoccupied and valueless but for the immense increase of facilities for the preparation of cotton for the market. In the three states of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, the sales of the public lands of the General Government amounted to 18,099,505 acres, during the eleven years ending on the 30th of June, 1844, -yielding to the National Treasury more than $30,000,000. The sales of upland cotton lands by the United States land-officers, have amounted to many tens of millions of acres; and none have been sold at a lower rate than $1 25 an acrea large proportion at a higher rate.

"It is to be remarked, finally, that the cotton-gins now in use throughout the whole South are truly the original invention of Whitney,--that no improvement or successful variation of the essential parts has yet been effected. The actual characteristics of the machine, (the cylinder and brush,) the sole real instruments by which the seed is removed and the cotton cleaned, REMAIN, in cotton-gins of even the most recent manufacture, PRECISELY AS WHITNEY LEFT THEM. The principle has not been altered since the first cotton-gin was put in motion by the inventor, though great improvements have been made in the application and direction of the moving forces, in the employment of steam-power, in the runninggear, and other incidentals. Every one of the various cotton-gins in use, under the names of different makers, contains the essentials of Whitney's patent, without material change or addition. The brush and the cylinder remain, like Fulton's paddle-wheel, unchanged in form and necessity, however vast the improvements in the machinery that causes the motion.

"A more imposing result of mechanical ingenuity directed to the benefit of a whole nation, and, through it, of mankind, has not been recorded in the history of the human mind. Certainly there is no patriotic American that will not rejoice to accord to this eminently useful, though basely-wronged inventor, the judgment so well-expressed by Mr. Lanman, (Merchants' Magazine, Vol. IV., pp. 208, 209,)— that "Whitney earned the credit of giving a spring to the agriculture of the South, which has been continued, unimpaired, to this day, a credit that will endure while the cotton-plant whitens the plantations of the South with its snow harvests, or the machinery of the cotton-factory clatters upon the waterfall!"