Credit we regard as the legitimate offspring of commerce and free institutions, and a most active and salutary agent in the production of national and individual wealth. Far from being demoralizing in its tendency, it is pre-eminently the reverse, as it essentially implies mutual and extended confidence, founded upon general, known and established habits of honesty and punctuality. It can exist only in an atmosphere composed of such elements. But though we deem thus highly of credit, paradoxical as it may seem at the first view, we regard debt, in itself, as being very far from a benefit, and in the extent to which it is habitually carried in our country, a very great, and sometimes a demoralizing evil. That credit which is merely the correlative of indebtedness, is not the credit of which we have spoken. To illustrate our meaning, we could not select a case more strikingly appropriate than that of the foreign commerce now under discussion. We annually export, for example, to Europe, agricultural staples to the amount of eighty millions, and import merchandise to the same or a corresponding amount. If this were a transaction between two individuals, or even between two governments, it is obvious that no money would be required to effect the exchange, however numerous might be the separate sales and purchases into which it might be subdivided. If the European, for example, would purchase cotton to the amount of a million to-day, it would be certain that the American would have occasion to purchase that amount of merchandise tomorrow; and, instead of keeping a dead capital in money, to pay backward and forward through the extended operations of the whole year, they would make use of mutual credits, either in the form of conventional tokens, or entries upon their respective books. This would be an example of credit in its most safe and salutary form; at the same time performing the functions of money, and avoiding the evils of debt. And even as this commerce is actually carried on by the separate operations of unconnected individuals, bills of exchange, under a well-regulated system of mutual credits, might be made to perform the same function, to a much greater extent than it has been hitherto done. This branch of credit rests upon the solid foundation of property, and it can scarcely be doubted that importing merchants, residing in the staple-growing States, could organize a much more perfect system with the manufacturers of Europe, than any that has heretofore existed. They have great advantages over the Northern merchants in this respect. They are nearer to the consumers, know better the extent and nature of their wants, and can supply them by a more rapid operation, involving less delay, and requiring shorter credits from abroad. Short credits and quick returns, making a small capital, by frequent operations and moderate profits, answer the purpose of a large one moving more slowly, will be the true policy of our importing merchants. For such a system, our means of internal communication, unobstructed at all seasons, and consisting, to a great and rapidly increasing extent, of railroads, will afford facilities unknown to any other portion of the United States. But to enable our importing merchants to introduce this system of short credits in their foreign transactions, the co-operation of our planters and consumers is indispensable. A radical change must be made in their system of economy. Their habit of laying out their incomes before they get

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them, and requiring a credit in all their dealing for the year, till the close of it, or until they sell their crops, even if it be longer, is the root of the evil of our whole system of credit. It must be eradicated if we would produce a great and salutary reform in our commerce and credit. If the planters require a long credit, the merchants, wholesale and retail, through whom they were supplied, would at least require an equally long credit, so far as they purchase upon credit. A large money capital becomes thus necessary for the importing merchants, that a long credit may be extended to the planters, who, so far from really requiring credit, own the whole capital which pays for our entire annual importations! This is a complete inversion of the natural order of things. The planters, producing and possessing that which constitutes almost the whole of our annual wealth, and having the means of giving credit to every other class, require credit of all others! How does this happen? The answer is easy. There is no mystery about it. It results from starting at the wrong point, and expending every year the proceeds of the coming crop, instead of the crop already made. If every planter would adopt the system of expending, in the current year, the income of the year preceding, and of making all his purchases for cash, instead of on credit, he would most palpably promote his own interest, and individually contribute his part to a general reform of the most vital importance to the whole country. Highly as we estimate credit, in the operations of commerce, we believe it may be affirmed, as a general truth, that debt is a most consuming moth to the planting interest. What practical planter can doubt, that for the credits annually obtained by himself or his neighbors, at the sales of the estates of deceased persons, and in various other modes, he pays from 15 to 20 per cent. more than the same property would cost if purchased with cash in hand. Let the suggested change in our economy, then, be no longer delayed. Every planter who adopts it will at once perceive its salutary effects upon his own comfort, independence, and prosperity; and he will have the consolation of reflecting that he is at the same time performing the duty of a patriotic citizen. confidently believe it would dispense with one-half of the capital that would otherwise be necessary for carrying on our foreign commerce by a system of direct importation.

But whatever may be the agency of a well-regulated credit, in bringing about the proposed reform in our foreign commerce, a very considerable money capital will nevertheless be indispensable to its complete accomplishment. Nor can it be doubted that the staplegrowing States have the most abundant resources for supplying this description of capital, if the planters, who are our principal capitalists, can be induced to abandon the suicidal course they have heretofore pursued, of devoting their whole income (generally by anticipation) to the purchase of negroes to produce more cotton, and appropriate even a moderate portion of it to aid in the accomplishment of this great enterprise. If every planter would take a dispassionate and comprehensive view of his own individual interest, he would perceive that the blind instinct of accumulation, which prompts him to make the crop of one year the means of increasing that of the next, is the most fatal policy he could pursue. It is a system which, in

the very nature of things, must inevitably defeat its own purposes. It will hardly be stating the case too strongly, to say that at least one-half of the incomes thus devoted to the increased production of cotton, are devoted to over production, and that they are consequently appropriated, not for the benefit of the cotton-planters themselves, but for that of the foreign and domestic consumers of their great staple. The principle of political economy laid down in the report of the Select Committee, and from which this conclusion is deduced, was known to practical men long before it was promulgated by any writer on the theory of wealth. It is founded upon the universal experience of mankind. If the supply of any article materially exceeds the effective demand, a competition is created among the sellers, which depresses the price greatly beyond a due proportion to the excess in quantity. In like manner a deficient supply creates a competition among the buyers, which increases the price in a corresponding degree. So general is this principle, that we may safely affirm that in any probable state of the demand for cotton, a small crop, if not extremely small, will produce a larger aggregate income to the cotton-planting States, than a large one. Between the extreme points where high prices check consumption on the one hand, and low prices check production on the other, there is a wide range for the operation of this principle. There is no class of producers so likely to suffer from over production as the cotton-planters. Widely dispersed over an immense territory, without the means of consultation or concert among themselves, they cannot prevent the habitual occurrence of excessive crops, unless they adopt a system which will of itself have a constant tendency to prevent it. The basis of that system should be the investment of at least a fair proportion of their net annual income in some other profitable pursuit, instead of invest ing it in land and negroes; and we believe that there is no such pursuit that promises a more abundant reward to industry and enterprise than the direct importation of foreign merchandise through our Southern seaports. Where, for example, a man of known integrity, capacity, and industry, with a moderate capital, shall be engaged or disposed to engage in the business of foreign importations, what more public-spirited and profitable appropriation can a planter make of a portion of his surplus capital than to invest it in this importing concern, as a limited co-partner, under the wise enactments recently adopted in several of the staple-growing States?

One-half of the net income of the cotton-planters, thus applied for a few years only, would furnish abundant capital for conducting our whole foreign commerce.

May we not confidently anticipate, therefore, that the planters, who are so deeply interested in the results of the great commercial reform we are attempting to effect, and whose co-operation is so indispensable to its success, will put their shoulders to the wheel at once, with a firm resolution to contribute every aid that may be required for the accomplishment of so glorious an enterprise?

Taking it for granted that all the difficulty anticipated on this score, will vanish before the public-spirited enterprise of our capitalists, we look forward with hopes equally sanguine, to the removal of the existing obstructions to the intercourse between our importing cities,

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and the vast interior which they are destined to supply with the manufactures of foreign countries. In this view of the subject, too high an estimate can scarcely be placed upon a railroad communication between the Southern Atlantic cities and the navigable waters of the West. The most high-wrought visions of enthusiasm will, we doubt not, be found, in the rapid progress of events, to sink down into insignificance, when compared with the splendid realities which time will soon develop; and we confidently anticipate that ten years hence history will exhibit to us results which the most excited imagination would not now venture to predict. This magnificent scheme of internal communication will give us the command of the whole Valley of the Mississippi, in spite of the established ascendency of the Northern cities, in the business of foreign importations and internal commerce. For whether we scale the interposing mountain barriers, like Hannibal, or turn them like his more skilful successor and rival, the line of operations which will carry us to the centre of this immense theatre of commercial competition, will be but half as long as that of our Northern rivals; and, what is next in importance, will be at all times unobstructed, while theirs will be closed up for several months annually, by the freezing of their rivers and canals. And though we may neither defeat the Romans in successive battles, nor drive the Austrians out of Italy by annihilating successive armies, we shall perform an achievement more glorious than either that of Hannibal or Napoleon, while we conquer and bless, by the peaceful weapons of industry and enterprise, plains incomparably more rich and extensive than those which they overran and desolated by the destructive weapons of war.

It is impossible for any enlightened and patriotic citizen of the Southern States to contemplate, without enthusiasm, the beneficial effects which will be produced on our commercial, social, and political relations, by opening a direct communication with the great Valley of the Mississippi. It will form an indissoluble bond of union between communities whose interests are closely interwoven, and will give a tenfold activity to a commerce which even the Alleghany heights have not been able altogether to prevent. The commercial cities of the South Atlantic and of the Gulf of Mexico, are undoubtedly the natural marts of the Western people for obtaining their supplies of foreign merchandise. It is there they find a market for the principal part of their own staple productions, even now, when they obtain their supplies of foreign merchandise from the Northern cities, by a complicated and expensive operation, and by a long and tedious transportation. How decidedly it would be to their interest to obtain, by a direct exchange, their foreign merchandise from the communities where they sell their domestic productions, avoiding all the expense and delay and hazard of purchasing bills on the North! And how great and overwhelming will be the preference due to this direct intercourse of exchanges, when the transportation of their merchandise shall be but half in point of distance, and one-sixth in point of time? Every merchant who understands experimentally the importance of time in the transportation of his merchandise, will at once perceive the decisive advantage which this circumstance alone will give to our Southern cities over their Northern competitors. We,

therefore, regard the completion of the line of communication, to which we have alluded, as a principal and most efficient means of establishing a system of direct importations through our Southern cities, and breaking the shackles of our commercial dependence. When it shall be completed, the commerce of foreign countries on the one hand, and of the great West on the other, will seek our Southern importing cities, by a direct line of communication, so cheap and expeditious, that both parties will find it their interest to meet there and effect their various exchanges. This great work, though itself an artificial structure, will be the means of throwing commerce into its natural channels. Entertaining these views, we cannot but strenuously urge it upon our fellow-citizens, and the political authorities of our respective States, to give every practicable aid toward its accomplishment, and that of the lateral communications which may be necessary to render its benefits more diffusive. Let us act not only efficiently, but promptly. We must seize the propitious occasion now presented to us, lest it pass away and never return.

The practicability of this railroad communication, is no longer doubtful. Indeed, it may be said that it is nearly half completed by one route, and will be more than half completed when the railroad shall have been extended, as it soon will be, from Augusta to Madison, in Georgia. Connecting this with the Charleston and Hamburg railroad, we shall have more than 240 miles of continuous railroad on a direct line to the navigable waters of the Tennessee, and conducting us to a point not more than 200 miles distant from those waters. On this subject we cannot be too deeply impressed with the necessity of sacrificing local predilections to the common good. Let that line be adopted which shall be the shortest, cheapest and best, without the slightest regard to those conflicts of local interest, which are, at best, comparatively unimportant, and perhaps purely imaginary. The great benefit which our whole interior is to derive from a direct trade, both with foreign countries and the Western States, must be reflected from our importing cities. If it causes these to grow and flourish, the whole interior, within the sphere of circulation, will participate in their prosperity, by a law which is as certain in its operation, as that which causes the blood of the animal system to flow from the heart to the extremities.

Such, fellow-citizens, are the views by which we have been actuated in calling your attention to the grave and important subject of this address. It was not to have been anticipated, that the purposes we so distinctly expressed through the report of our Select Committee, would be so greatly misapprehended as they have been by some of our fellow-citizens. Surely we may claim the privilege, and urge the expediency of carrying on our own commerce with foreign nations, directly through our own cities, and by our own merchants, without justly incurring the imputation of hostility to the Northern States of this confederacy. We are not aware that they have any prescriptive right to act for us, any more than they have to think for us. It is no hostility to their interests, but regard for our own, by which we are animated. "It is not that we love Cæsar less, but that we love Rome more." We are certainly as anxious to encourage, upon principles of reciprocity, a direct trade with the Northern States, as with