Alexandria Gazette

Line of French Steamers to Norfolk,

If we doubt the feasibility of this enterprise, and think it hazardous to the interests of Virginia to give it encouragement, we protest we must not be understood as discrediting the claims of its projectors to public gratitude. Those gentlemen who have pressed this subject so earnestly upon public attention, have been moved, no doubt, by a patriotism in every way to be commended. Yet we cannot but think that patriotism has misled judgment, and they have been beguiled by a delusive hope which they cannot realize. While taken in connection with the system of the Railroads west of Lynchburg, a system which we are pained to hear defended as a necessity of their existence, and consequently hopeless of remedy, the scheme is broadly preposterous, we cannot think that it is capable of success now, even were that system modified to the demands of the most liberal policy.

Monsieur Lacouture, who seems to be so much surprised at the silence of Mr. Ballard Preston, states that French manufacturers are ready and anxious to send cargoes of goods to Norfolk. Suppose they should do so at this time--what arrangements for their distribution to the back country of Norfolk, or for their consumption at Norfolk, on any terms than those of utter ruin, are ready? And what cargoes beginning to be adequate to an exchange for such cargoes, could possibly be furnished the ships? We apprehend there can be one, and one only, answer to these questions. In every particular the adventure would fail so desperately, that henceforth, Norfolk, the "map of the Chesapeake," and the roads to Memphis, would make the stomach of St. Nazaire heave with disgust. It is not in this way that great cities are built, or great enterprises cherished. Festina lente is the valuable key to the growth of commerce.

Norfolk is now open to the produce of a vast country; the produce which everybody needs, and all the world will come for. She stands, such is the theory at least, in the path of its distribution to the world, whether to our principal marts, which are the present depots of commerce, or to the foreign demand, when it shall accumulate sufficiently to attract that demand. Yet, it must take that produce in quantity. It may be rapidly, or it may be slowly, but the progress of an infant city must be by development in her home relations first. Nothing but some violent act of nature, destroying existing centres, or the avenues to them, or some violent act of government unsettling the relations of comity between sections, or some surprising cause of excitement trooping together new populations in masses, such as our own age has seen in California and Australia, can ever give birth to foreign commerce in a day. When produce shall accumulate at Norfolk to make it a mart for produce, then the whole world may come for it, to buy it with their commodities, as France, for instance, with her wines and silks.

Mr. Preston has done his duty, hopefully and earnestly, and patriotically--but he is not to be blamed that the people of Virginia do not take hold, practically, of a thing in which they are unwilling to invest their money. We believe that their caution is wise. To precipitate direct trade on the scale proposed, might furnish material for a little jubilee, but it would soon die out, to be remembered as the Bristol Convention is remembered--only for its fruitlessness!--South Side Democrat.