AMERICAN IMPROVEMENTS.

[The very recent publication of the ninth volume of the Encyclopaedia Americana [⁶] enables us to lay before our readers the following interesting notices, connected with the national weal and internal economy of the United States of North America.]

Navy.—Since the late war, the growth and improvement of our navy has kept pace with our national prosperity. We could now put to sea, in a few mouths, with a dozen ships of the line; the most spacious, efficient, best, and most beautiful constructions that ever traversed the ocean. This is not merely an American conceit, but an admitted fact in Europe, where our models are studiously copied. In the United States, a maximum and uniform calibre of cannon has been lately determined on and adopted. Instead of the variety of length, form, and calibre still used in other navies, and almost equal to the Great Michael with her "bassils, mynards, hagters, culverings, flings, falcons, double dogs, and pestilent serpenters," our ships offer flush and uniform decks, sheers free from hills, hollows, and excrescences, and complete, unbroken batteries of thirty-two or forty-two pounders. Thus has been realized an important desideratum—the greatest possible power to do execution coupled with the greatest simplification of the means.

But, while we have thus improved upon the hitherto practised means of naval warfare, we are threatened with a total change. This is by the introduction of bombs, discharged horizontally, instead of shot from common cannon. So certain are those who have turned their attention to this subject that the change must take place, that, in France, they are already speculating on the means of excluding these destructive missiles from a ship's sides, by casing them in a cuirass of iron. Nor are these ideas the mere offspring of idle speculation. Experiments have been tried on hulks, by bombs projected horizontally, with terrible effect. If the projectile lodged in a mast, in exploding it overturned it, with all its yards and rigging; if in the side, the ports were opened into each other; or, when near the water, an immense chasm was opened, causing the vessel to sink immediately. If it should not explode until it fell spent upon deck, besides doing the injury of an ordinary ball, it would then burst, scattering smoke, fire, and death, on every side. When this comes to pass, it would seem that the naval profession would cease to be very desirable. Nevertheless, experience has, in all ages, shown that, the more destructive are the engines used in war, and the more it is improved and systematized, the less is the loss of life. Salamis and Lepanto can either of them alone count many times the added victims of the Nile, Trafalgar, and Navarino.

One effect of the predicted change in naval war, it is said, will be the substitution of small vessels for the larger ones now in use. The three decker presents many times the surface of the schooner, while her superior number of cannon does not confer a commensurate advantage; for ten bombs, projected into the side of a ship, would be almost as efficacious to her destruction as a hundred. As forming part of a system of defence for our coast, the bomb-cannon, mounted on steamers, which can take their position at will, would be terribly formidable. With them—to say nothing of torpedoes and submarine navigation—we need never more be blockaded and annoyed as formerly. Hence peaceful nations will be most gainers by this change of system; but it is not enough that we should be capable of raising a blockade: we are a commercial people: our merchant ships visit every sea, and our men-of-war must follow and protect them there.

Newspapers.—No country has so many newspapers as the United States. The following table, arranged for the American Almanac of 1830, is corrected from the Traveller, and contains a statement of the number of newspapers published in the colonies at the commencement of the revolution; and also the number of newspapers and other periodical works, in the United States, in 1810 and 1828.

STATES. 1775. 1810. 1828.
Maine 29
Massachusetts 7 32 78
New Hampshire 1 12 17
Vermont 14 21
Rhode Island 2 7 14
Connecticut 4 11 33
New York 4 66 161
New Jersey 8 22
Pennsylvania 9 71 185
Delaware 2 4
Maryland 2 21 37
District of Columbia 6 9
Virginia 2 23 34
North Carolina 2 10 20
South Carolina 3 10 16
Georgia 1 13 18
Florida 1 2
Alabama 10
Mississippi 4 6
Louisiana 10 9
Tennessee 6 8
Kentucky 17 23
Ohio 14 66
Indiana 17
Michigan 2
Illinois 4
Missouri 5
Arkansas 1
Cherokee Nation 1
Total 37 358 802

The present number, however, amounts to about a thousand. Thus the state of New York is mentioned in the table as having 161 newspapers; but a late publication states that there are 193, exclusive of religious journals. New York has 1,913,508 inhabitants. There are about 50 daily newspapers in the United States, two-thirds of which are considered to give a fair profit. The North American colonies, in the year 1720, had only seven newspapers: in 1810, the United States had 359; in 1826, they had 640; in 1830, 1,000, with a population of 13,000,000; so that they have more newspapers than the whole 190 millions of Europe.

In drawing a comparison between the newspapers of the three freest countries, France, England, and the United States, we find, as we have just said, those of the last country to be the most numerous, while some of the French papers have the largest subscription; and the whole establishment of a first-rate London paper is the most complete. Its activity is immense. When Canning sent British troops to Portugal, in 1826, we know that some papers sent reporters with the army. The zeal of the New York papers also deserves to be mentioned, which send out their news-boats, even fifty miles to sea, to board approaching vessels, and obtain the news that they bring. The papers of the large Atlantic cities are also remarkable for their detailed accounts of arrivals, and the particulars of shipping news, interesting to the commercial world, in which they are much more minute than the English. From the immense number of different papers in the United States, it results that the number of subscribers to each is limited, 2,000 being considered a respectable list. One paper, therefore, is not able to unite the talent of many able men, as is the case in France. There men of the first rank in literature or politics occasionally, or at regular periods, contribute articles. In the United States, few papers have more than one editor, who generally writes upon almost all subjects himself. This circumstance necessarily makes the papers less spirited and able than some of the foreign journals, but is attended with this advantage, that no particular set of men is enabled to exercise a predominant influence by means of these periodicals. Their abundance neutralizes their effects. Declamation and sophistry are made comparatively harmless by running in a thousand conflicting currents.

Paper-making.—The manufacture of paper has of late rapidly increased in the United States. According to an estimate in 1829, the whole quantity made in this country amounted to about five to seven millions a year, and employed from ten to eleven thousand persons. Rags are not imported from Italy and Germany to the same amount as formerly, because people here save them more carefully; and the value of the rags, junk, &c., saved annually in the United States, is believed to amount to two millions of dollars. Machines for making paper of any length are much employed in the United States. The quality of American paper has also improved; but, as paper becomes much better by keeping, it is difficult to have it of the best quality in this country, the interest of capital being too high. The paper used here for printing compares very disadvantageously with that of England. Much wrapping paper is now made of straw, and paper for tracing through is prepared in Germany from the poplar tree. A letter of Mr. Brand, formerly a civil officer in Upper Provence, in France (which contains many pine forests), dated Feb. 12, 1830, has been published in the French papers, containing an account of his successful experiments to make coarse paper of the pine tree. The experiments of others have led to the same results. Any of our readers, interested in this subject, can find Mr. Brand's letter in the Courrier Francais of Nov. 27, 1830, a French paper published in New York. In salt-works near Hull, Massachusetts, in which the sea-water is made to flow slowly over sheds of pine, in order to evaporate, the writer found large quantities of a white substance—the fibres of the pine wood dissolved and carried off by the brine—which seemed to require nothing but glue to convert it into paper.