ing the demand for salt from our salt springs and the seaboard.
We have the means and materials for the manufacture of gunpowder.
We have rich mines of lead and copper and iron are, to be found at various points in the State, and which, if judiciously and energetically managed and worked, are capable of supplying the wants of the Confederacy.
The question then arises, what is necessary to be done to render all these articles of prime necessity immediately available?
In 1775, 1773, and 1777, our forefathers passed ordinances providing for working the lead mines in Montgomery and other counties; for procuring saltpetre and sulphur, and stimulating the manufacture of gunpowder; for encouraging the manufacture of salt and designating the places at which it was to be made, and for encouraging the manufacture of arms and ammunition.
The mode adopted was the payment of proper bounties — such, for example, as fifty cents per pound (bounty) for salty re, and sixteen cents per pound fo
rhaps hired a substitute, who, for a pecuniary consideration, agreed to be shot at in his place.
Such men are found everywhere throughout the Confederacy, and it is time something were done to put an end to their money making business.
I have been investigating this subject in the hope that I would be able to make some practical recommendation that would check if it did not eradicate this evil.
In the first volume of the Revised Code of 1819, page 551, I find an act which was passed in 1777, entitled "an act to prevent forestalling, regrafting, engrossing, and public vendues," which, with very slight amendments, would, if re-enacted, check in a great measure this growing evil.
I invite your attention to it, and recommend that some similar act be passed at this session.
The finances of the State are in a highly prosperous condition — much more prosperous indeed than could have been anticipated under the circumstances which surround us. The enormous demands made upon the tre
id.
Governor Letcher, after calling attention to the condition of our railroads, (a most important subject,) passes a lofty eulogium upon Gen. Jackson.
We wish he had closed it with a recommendation to appropriate $200,000 to the use of his wife and children.
If ever the State was bound in honor and justice to take care of anybody whatever, it is thus bound to take care of those who were nearest and dearest to Stonewall Jackson.
The Governor raises the old cry against extortioners, attributing to these men (whom we are not disposed to defend) the evils inevitably resulting from a depreciated currency.
If he can only prevail on Congress to curtail the redundant currency, until it is cut down to the proper amount necessary to serve the country, he will get rid of "extortioners, forestallers, regretters," and all that sort of cattle at once, without reviving the law of 1777.
If he cannot do this penal laws cannot do it. Improve the currency, and the extortioners will fall.
An Eventful gun.
--The Memphis Argus gives the following account of a gun captured at Vicksburg:
In the year 1768, in La Belle France, it first came into existence.
It was christened with the Royal Crown and Cypher of the kingdom.
It is an iron gun, its make antique, looking like old- time cannon, moulded when the world was not as old by centuries as now. Its calibre is that of a 36-pounder.
On the 25th day of April, in the years of grace 1777, Lafayette landed in Charleston; with him landed the gun, cast in France, and bearing the imprint of royalty, which in future was to open its iron throat and bellow out, "Down with King and tyranny, and up with the star of a free people and a free Government." All through the war of the Revolution its voice resounded with those of our fathers in their shouts of battle and of victory.
At the close of the Revolutionary war it was taken to New Orleans and kept there until the second war with Great Britain, when it took an active
of them, to hold his four millions well together, and they have faithfully kept the injunction.
But the old City of Frankfort clearly was too narrow a realm for the fruitful sowing of four millions; and, in consequence, the five were determined after a while to extend their sphere of operations by establishing branch banks at the chief cities of Europe.
The eldest son, Anselm, born 1773, remained at Frankfort; the second, Solomon, born in 1774, settled at Vienna; the third, Nathan, born in 1777, went to London, the fourth, Charles, the infant terrible of the family, established himself in the suit climate of Naples, and the fifth and youngest, James, born 1792, took up his residence at Paris.
Strictly united, the wealth and power of the five Rothschild was vested in the oldest born; nevertheless, the shrewdest of the sons of Mayor Anselm, and the heir of his genius, Nathan, the third son, soon took the reins of government into his own hands.
By his faith in Wellington and the
l, entwined about the staff, upon which are inscribed the names of Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson.
In the centre of the card below is the blank form of invitation, and the list of managers subscribed thereto.
"Upon either side of the centre piece are two pillars standing upon a base of three steps.
The base represents stone, and the three steps are intended to represent the three great struggles of our nation for existence: the Revolution, the lower one, inscribed with the figures '1777-83' the war with Great Britain, '1812-15'; and the present war, '1860-65.' Upon these steps are granite pedestals of rough rock, upon which are erected columns of fasces, strongly bound together with cords, representing the columns of the masses of the people supporting the government of the country.
The right-hand column is surmounted by the American eagle, destroying a serpent.
The National pendant is entwined about this shaft.
Upon the other column is also an eagle, grasping in her talo
