314 List of Patents for New Inventions. 



and at the peace they found means to keep possession of what 

 they had stolen. In the small district between Mentz and 

 Coblentz, which, with the windings of the river, hardly makes 

 27 (German) miles, you don't pay less than nine tolls. Be- 

 tween Holland and Coblentz, there are at least sixteen. Every 

 one of these seldom produces less than 25,000 or 30,000 guilders 

 a year." The tolls were not levied for supporting beacons and 

 removing shoals, or for any other purpose useful to commerce; 

 but were, in general, a sort of black-mail, or premium paid 

 by the merchant to escape being plundered. What was rob- 

 bery at first, — time, which consecrates so many abuses, has 

 improved into vested rights ; and of course, if the trade of 

 the river is to be released from these burdens, the fee- simple 

 must be bought up by the State, or compounded for in some 

 Other way. So much is trade shackled by these vexatious im- 

 posts, that the exports of fourteen millions of people by the 

 river, amounts only, according to the German editor, to six 

 millions of guilders (600,000/.), and the imports to forty mil- 

 lions (4,000,000/.). This is marvellously little, whenVe recol- 

 lect that the inhabitants of Rhenish Germany are among the 

 most industrious and civilised in continental Europe, even 

 though we allow (what is not probable) that half of the foreign 

 trade of the country is carried on through other channels. The 

 exports and imports ofPennsylvania alone, with one million of 

 inhabitants, exceed this sum. As for the internal trade, which 

 is equally burdened with the foreign, the German editor gives 

 no estimate of its amount ; but from the scattered notices to 

 be found in travellers, we know that it has long been in a 

 languid and depressed state. The Hudson, flowing through a 

 country inhabited by less than two millions of people, was na- 

 vigated by 2,000 sloops some years ago. We question if the 

 Rhine has nearly as many at this day. And no less than 78 

 steam-boats plied on the Mississippi, at a time (1823) when a 

 single vessel of the kind had never been seen on the Rhine. — 

 Scotsman. 



LIST OF NEW PATENTS. 



To Erskine Hazard, a citizen of the United States of North 

 America, but now residing in Norfolk-street, Strand, engineer, 

 for an invention, communicated from abroad, with additions, 

 of a method for preparing explosive mixtures and employing 

 them as a moving power for machinery. — Dated the 12th of 

 August, 1826. — 2 months allowed to enrol specification. 



To John Thomas Thompson, of Long Acre, camp equipage 

 maker, for improvements in making metallic tubes, whereby 

 strength and lightness are obtained, and for applying them, 



with 



