LUMBER TRADE OF BANGOR, MAINE.

We are indebted to SAMUEL HARRIS, Esq., of Bangor, Maine, for the subjoined statement of Lumber surveyed at Bangor for the season of 1851, as follows:

AMOUNT OF LUMBER SURVEYED AT BANGOR, DURING THE SEASON 1851, BY THE FOLLOWING

The following figures, from the books of the Surveyor General's Office, (for which we are obliged to that officer,) show the amount of lumber surveyed for the year 1851, as follows:

THE BRITISH CORN TRADE FOR 154 YEARS.

Mr. Brown, one of the Secretaries of the London Statistical Society, has recently published at once the most compendious, comprehensive, and accurate view of the corn trade of England that has ever been made. A Liverpool cotemporary gives the following summary of it :

"The quantities of wheat and wheat flour imported and exported, the price, the du ty, and the titles of acts of Parliament regulating the duty, are given for 154 years on a single folio page, in excellent readable print, and with lucid arrangement. Mr. Brown's tabular view is calculated to suggest many interesting and instructive inferences, and we shall submit a few. For the first 94 years, or from 1697, in the reign of William III., we imported neither foreign nor colonial corn, but we exported corn, and in some years to the amount of above 500,000 quarters. In the four years of the 17th century, the average price is about 53s. which is about 10s. a quarter more than the four years of our free trade, or 11s. including the duty now charged. In so far, then, as bread corn is concerned, our people are at present better off than they were 150 years ago in the good old times of William of Orange. The most remarkable feature of the early years of the table, reckoning from the commencement of the 18th century, is the extraordinary fluctuation of prices. In 1706 and 1707 we have corn at 23s. 9d. and 26s. 1d., and in 1709 and 1710 at 71s. 11d. and 71s. 6d. In 1728 we have it at nearly 50s., and in 1732 we have it at 24s. 4d., and in 1740 it is 45s. 4d. In short, in one year there was a glut, and in another, not far from it, something very like a famine. This miserable state of things evidently arose from want of capital, want of agricultural skill, want of cheap means of conveyance, and reliance on the broken

reed of native resources. In every one of the years of scarcity in question, we were considerable exporters, by the help of bounties which existed from the Revolution, and which enhanced the cost to the consumer, without having the slightest effect in producing steadiness of supply. From 1757, about the era of the commencement of the cotton manufacture, and consequent rapid increase of population, we began to import largely; and importing and consuming more than we exported, England became virtually an importing country, the export being factitious. From 1757 to 1793 prices, with agricultural improvement, became more steady, and ranged only between 36s, and 523. Foreign corn, for the protection of landlord rent, being all the while subject to a duty when wheat was under a certain price. The object aimed at in this kind of legislation seems to have been, never to allow the price to fall below 518., or thereabouts; for, when under this, the duty levied on the foreign article ranged, as Mr. Brown has shown, from 178. to 25s. a quarter. Thanks to Peel, Russel, and free trade, we have our bread corn at this moment, with more than double the mouths to feed, by 11s. a quarter below this long-cherished landlord standard. In the third year of the war of the French Revolution, the price of wheat rose to 75s., and in the fourth to 788. In 1798 and 1799, with war and a depreciated currency, it rose to 113s. and 119s., and with the same bad allies in 1812 it rose to 126s.—that is, to between three and four times its present cost, and about 180 per cent higher than it was in the years of famine-1739 and 1740, the last of which was emphatically called by the Scots, the black,' or direful spring. From the year 1823 downwards to the entire exploding of the system in 1848, a direct tax on bread has contibuted to the public treasury. In 1842 this tax produced £1,194,615, and in the whole period it has yielded to it, as we find by Mr. Brown's table, £7,661,100. It is quite certain, then, that the whole affair, bounties, duties, and sliding scale, from the first days of King William to the last days of Robert Peel, has been virtually a swindle on the public, the swindlers all the while laboring under the strange hallucination that they were honest men, and even patriots in a sort of breeches-pocket sense."

FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC EXPORTS FROM UNITED STATES FROM 1821 TO 1851.

EXPORTS OF BREADSTUFFS AND PROVISIONS FROM U. S. FROM 1821 TO 1851.

TABLE EXHIBITING THE AGGREGATE VALUE OF BREADSTUFFS AND PROVISIONS EXPORTED ANNUALLY FROM 1821 TO 1851, INCLUSIVE, YEAR ENDING SEPTEMBER 30.

NOTE. In the arrivals the past year are included the following foreign vessels :Ships-Bremen 23, British 2, Swedish 1, Prussian 1; barks-Bremen 8, British 7, Swedish 2, Russian 1, Dutch 1, Lubec 1; brigs-British 61, Danish 1, Genoese 1, Swedish 3, Norwegian 1, Russian 1, Oriental 2; schooners-British 29, Hanoverian 2. Total-27 ships, 21 barks, 70 brigs, 30 schooners—in all, 148.

PRICE OF WHISKY IN BALTIMORE, 1851.

PRICES OF WHISKY IN BARRELS AT BALTIMORE, on the 1st and 15th of EACH MONTH, '51.

RAIL ROAD, CANAL, AND STEAMBOAT STATISTICS.

STATISTICS OF THE CANALS OF OHIO.

Comparative statement of the gross amount of tolls, water-rents, and fines collected on each of the Ohio canals; amount of tolls refunded, cost of collection, and net amount paid into the State Treasury, during each of the six years, from 1846 to 1851, inclusive, as compiled for the Cincinnati Price-Current :—

Maryland..

RAILROADS IN THE UNITED STATES, JANUARY 1, 1852.

The following table of the number of railroads in progress and operation in the United States on the 1st of January, 1852, is derived from the American Railroad Journal. It is believed to be correct, at least so far as those in operation are concerned. It varies, however, from tables prepared for the Merchants' Magazine, and published in July, 1851, (vol xxv., pages 115-121,) :—

Virginia

THE FIRST STEAMBOAT ON THE OHIO RIVER.

We find in the Cincinnati Chronicle, the following statement, signed by J. Winton and Wm. McGranahan of Newport, Kentucky, in relation to the first steamboat that navigated the Ohio River :

As there are many erroneous opinions extant concerning the first steamboat built on the western waters, the undersigned would like you to publish their evidence in the

matter.

In the fall of 1811 we were both present at the launching of the first steamer built on the Ohio River, and on board of her. She was built at the Pipetown shipyard at Pittsburg; was intended for the Pittsburg and New Orleans trade, and called the "Orleans." She was built after the fashion of a ship, with port holes in the sidelong bowsprit-painted a sky blue. Her cabin was in the hold.

She left in November of that year (1811) for New Orleans, and made the trip down in safety, but was never able to get back over the falls, her power being insufficient to propel her against a strong current. She continued to run below the falls for some time. Many persons are of the opinion that the Enterprise was the first boat built for the above trade. Such is not the fact. The Enterprise was the fourth or fifth boat built. The names of the others were the Etna and Vesuvius, built by a company who had a charter for fourteen years renewable, for the sole navigation by steam, of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. The Enterprise was built at Brownsville by a private