Iron ore is I am not able to say, but believe the Iron is, as well as the Coal, very extensive, if not inexhaustible."

FROM THE AFFIDAVIT OF THREE MINERS.

"Having been engaged in the Mining business in England, we were employed by the Callaway Mining and Manufacturing Company in sinking a shaft at their Coal Mines in Callaway county, Missouri, known as the Mastadon Coal Mines. Said shaft was ten feet in diameter and to the depth of eighty-eight feet, we found pure Cannel Coal in a horizontal strata in said shaft, seventy-five feet thick and from drifts made North and South about one hundred feet, and East and West about 30 feet without the Coal failing in extent. We believe the said Coal bank to be of the best quality and inexhaustible. This Coal bank is about five miles from the Missouri river and the same to which said company is now progressing in building a Railroad from the said bank to their depot on the Missouri river.”

In Professor Johnson's report to the Navy Department of the Uni ted States on American coals, we find at page 539 the following analysis of a specimen from the Osage river. The specimens which we have seen from Callaway county are, as far as we are capable of judging, in all respects similar to the Osage cannel coal.

"A specimen from the Osage river, Missouri, had, in its dry state, a specific gravity less than 1, as it floated on water. When allowed to imbibe water, it sank, and was, when fully saturated, found to have a specific gravity of 1.2. It contained of—

A trial for sulphur gave 0.482 per cent. of that material. From the above analysis, the volatile is to the fixed combustible as 1: 1.233. An analysis by the chromate of lead and the chlorate of potash, proved the combustible matter of this specimen to consist of-

From this analysis, the computation of evaporative power, as

sumed to be proportionate to the carbon, will give a result of 10.256 to 1 of combustible, and of 9.66 to 1 of the raw coal."

This analysis will enable those conversant with the properties of coal, to judge of the value of an article possessing qualities similar to the specimen.

ARTICLE IV.

NORTH MISSOURI RAILROAD.

The General Assembly of Missouri, at its late session, incorporated a company with authority to construct a Railroad from St. Charles to the northern boundary of the State, and we had reason to expect that before this the directors, appointed by that body, would have taken steps to organize the company and bring the merits of the work fairly before the country.

Those who have read the Western Journal from its commencement, must be satisfied that we are not inclined to advocate the prosecution of works of internal improvement to an extent that would be likely to produce pecuniary embarrassment on the part of either the State or its citizens: but we have constantly been, and are yet, the advocates of a system of improvement calculated to develop the rich resources of Missouri and afford to its inhabitants more extensive means of social intercourse, than they have hitherto enjoyed. Such works can never be accomplished without the active and manly efforts of those more immediately interested in their benefits. Mere legislative enactments creating corporations with authority to construct railroads or other works of public improvement, are totally fruitless unless carried out by the application of means equal to the ends proposed.

If our friends of North Missouri desire to enjoy the advantages, pecuniary and social, which accrue from railroads, they must put their own shoulders to the wheel. Let the directors of the North Missouri railroad appointed by the legislature, organize and, at least, survey the route. This will bring the merits of their work to the knowledge of our own citizens and to the capitalists of other parts of the country; and, moreover, it will place them in a condition to ask of Congress an appropriation of lands in aid of the work. When we look to the vast area of fertile land, situate between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, extending to, and embracing, the valley of the Red river of the North, and reflect how small a portion of this extensive region is the property of individuals, we feel fully persuaded that no railroad yet projected within

the territory of the United States, possesses stronger claims to aid from the General Government, than that from the Missouri river to the southern boundary of Iowa; for it must be regarded as the commencement of a great work which shall in time connect the Gulf of Mexico with Hudson's Bay, passing over at least five hundred miles of land, now the property of the General Government. It is so much the custom of the friends of every scheme of public improvement, to affirm that their own particular project possesses higher claimes than all others to public favor, that arguments in behalf of any work of improvement have lost their force on the public mind. And therefore, we simply ask our readers to examine a map of the United States; and, tracing a line from the Missouri river, beginning at any point below Jefferson City, to the valley of the Red river of Hudson's Bay, compare its utility with that of other public works which have been proposed east of the Rocky mountains. Having made such comparison, we know what their opinions would be, provided the country was inhabited throughout the line; but many will conclude that it will be soon enough to commence the work when the country shall have been settled. But we are of opinion that, begin when they may, the settlement of the country will keep pace with the progress of the road.

Were the route located from St. Charles to the Iowa line, the future settlement of that State would be made in a good degree with reference to the continuance of the work further north and by the time the Missouri section shall have been completed, the settlement and resources of the central and western parts of Iowa will furnish sufficient business to make the work profitable to the stockholders.

The distance from St. Charles to the Iowa line by the route proposed, would be about 200 miles. By reference to a communication published in the Western Journal in December, 1850, from the pen of B. A. Alderson, a civil Engineer of highly respectable attainments, we find that the route designated by him passes through eleven counties in Missouri; which, according to the census of 1850, contain 87,308 inhabitants, a number which would, in our opinion, be doubled within five years after the commencement of the road. It is useless at this day to discuss the benefits of railroads: they are sufficiently understood by every man of common intelligence in every part of the country; but it is difficult, especially in the newer States, to bring communities to act in concert. When this point is attained, the accomplishment of any ject which the public interest demands is rendered comparatively easy. And we are fully persuaded that if the citizens of North Missouri will unite upon this work and devote themselves to its accomplishment with the earnestness and zeal which have distinguished the efforts of citizens of other parts of the country on similar occasions, the enterprise can be accomplished without drawing upon their own resources beyond the means necessary to make

ob

a survey, and pay such expenses as may be incurred by agents employed to bring the subject fairly before the country. For should Congress make an appropriation of public lands in aid of the work equal to that granted to the Central Railroad of Illinois, there is not the slightest reason to doubt that capitalists may be found, who will cheerfully undertake the entire work. Indeed, we should not be surprised if a bonus could be obtained for the privilege.

A glance at the consequences of such a result is surely sufficient to incite the most lethargic individual to action. It would bring several millions of dollars into the State to be disbursed in the vicinity of the work; afford a market for a large quantity of stock, provisions and other agricultural products, while the work was progressing; increase the value of real estate near the line far above its present price; and, in addition to all these benefits, establish the most speedy and convenient means of social intercourse which have yet been discovered by man.

We are unwilling to believe that amongst the one hundred thousand inhabitants, immediately interested in this enterprise, there cannot be found individuals possessing a sufficient degree of public spirit, intelligence and influence to awaken the public mind to a just sense of its importance, and induce the citizens to move in the matter without delay.

The name of the individual who shall take the lead in this great enterprise and conduct it to a successful issue, will be entitled to a place in the annals of the western States not less conspicuous or enduring, than that occupied by De Wit Clinton in the history of New York.

ARTICLE VI.

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF GREAT BRITAIN.*

[From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.]

"The apparent contradiction," says the Edinburgh Review, "between the vast amount of unrelieved misery in the country, and the vast amount of energetic benevolence now existing in this country, which strikes so many with despair, inspires us, on the contrary, with the most sanguine hopes; because, in that benevolence, we see ample means of remedying nearly all our social evils,

*After the leading article of this Number was sent to press, we met with the following essay in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine for March, 1851, and conceiving that the facts and arguments which it contains are calculated to sustain our own views respecting the causes which limit the increase of population, we are induced to transfer it to the pages of the Western Journal. The statistics which it contains, are well worth the space occupied by the essay. EDITORS.

-means heretofore impotent solely because misplaced. We agree with the socialists in holding that the world can never have been intended to be, and will not long remain, what it is. It cannot be that the same intellect which has rung from nature her most hidden secrets, which has triumphed over the most gigantic material obstructions, which has exhausted worlds and then imagined new;' which has discovered and described laws operating in regions of space separate from us by a distance so vast that human imagination cannot figure it and arithmetical language can hardly express it, should not, when fairly applied to social and administrative science, be competent to rectify our errors and to smoothe our path -unless, indeed, society take refuge in the dreary creed, which shall never be ours, that the problem before us is insoluble, and the wretchedness around us inherent and incurable."

We entirely concur in these eloquent and just observations, though the honest and candid admissions they contain sound rather strange when coming from a journal which has, for nearly half-acentury, been the most strenuous, and not the least able, supporter of the system which has terminated in these woful results. We concur with this author in thinking, that it was never intended by Providence that things in this country should be as they now are; and that it is impossible they can long continue so. Sooner or later, if the premonitory symptoms of our diseased state continue to be disregarded by our rulers, and the influential part of the nation who now determine our policy, as they have been for a great number of years back, some terrible catastrophe will arise, like that in Ireland by the failure of the potato crop in 1846, which, amidst an appalling and perhaps unprecedented amount of human suffering, is in course of rectifying many of the social evils under which that ill-starred country has so long labored. We narrowly escaped such a catastrophe on occasion of the great monetary crisis of October, 1847, by far the most serious and widespread which Great Britain has ever known; and so much was the nation in its vital resources weakened by that calamity, and so wearing-out and grievous are the causes of evil still operating amongst us, that it is much to be feared that the catastrophe we anticipate will not be deferred beyond the next of the periodical monetary crises with which the country is now so regularly afflicted.

What renders our present social condition so alarming and depressing to the contemplative mind is, that the evils which are so widespread through society have only increased with the advance of the nation in general industry, accumulated capital, and me chanical power; and at a time when universal and unprecedented exertions have been made both for, the religious and moral education of the working-classes, the improvement of their habits, and the extension of their information. The most superficial observer must be aware what astonishing progress we have made since 1815.