[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.
[6] Philadelphia, Carey and Lea, 1832.
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