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while the spirit of improvement is pervading every other State-opening new sources of wealth and comfort and stimulating human industry in all its varied departmentsFlorida alone, like the slothful servant who buried his talent, seems well nigh content with inaction and repose on this vital subject. We do not transcend the limits of truth when we claim for her natural advantages, resources and capabilities for improvement, unsurpassed by those of any other State of the Union. She is the fifth in territorial area-the third in health-with some 1,200 miles Atlantic and Gulf sea-board-a fruitful soil-a genial climate, extending within the tropic of Cancer, and a range of agricultural products of unsurpassed variety and value. She has noble rivers-spacious harbors-inexhaustible supplies of timber. Around her floats, in endless succession, a large portion of the commercial marine of the civilized world, and she lies in the direct line of travel and transportation between the great marts of the Northeast and Southwestthe Atlantic, the Gulf, and the Pacific coasts.

With all these advantages, her progress, if it deserves the name, has no parallel within the limits of the Union in feebleness and insignificance. Colonized 300 years ago, she is still weak in numbers-with very little greater comparative public or private wealth than less favored sections, and the broad bosom of millions of her acres, susceptible of profitable tillage, is yet undisturbed by the hand of agricultural labor.

The causes which have produced this extraordinary and lamentable condition of affairs, are in good part pointed out and explained in the communication of Hon. MR. CABELL, our Representative in Congress, which I beg herewith to lay before you, as a paper of singular interest and value upon the resources of this State; but doubtless, no little blame must also attach to ourselves, as well as to our circumstances. It is questionable whether our legislation has latterly been of a character to encourage the investment of private capital, either at home or abroad, in any great work of public improvement. In a former communi

cation, the Executive had the pleasure to lay before your honorable bodies, more minutely, his views of a work of Internal Improvement in this State, which, as the foundation of a general system, affecting all interests as equally as possible, might, in his judgment, concentrate the energies of the State and people and break at once the deathlike torpor upon this vital subject. In partial accordance with the views then expressed, a charter was enacted; but, I regret to say, so hampered with restrictions as to render it of little practical value. In this respect, however, its condition was not peculiar. Other bills of a similar or correlative character were in like manner, rendered inoperative, under, as I conceive, a mistaken notion of contributing to the public security.

The lessons of experience, indeed, would dictate to us the necessity of caution in granting acts of incorporation ; but upon this subject, as well as all others, caution itself may become so extreme or ill-judged as to bring with it all the dangers of rashness and precipitancy. That golden mean which guards alike the rights and interests of the public and the corporators, and holds with equal hand the scale of justice, duty and obligation, is the true point of safety and efficiency. No man will be content to place his means at the arbitrary disposal of another. No prudent man will invest money in a public work under a charter which may at any moment, with or without reason, be repealed-his expenditure wasted-his time lost and his expectations blasted. Capital is proverbially wary and slow of confidence. It demands ample and written guaranties, and is not often disposed to risk its fiduciary operations upon any abstract or general confidence in mankind at large. If such restrictions do not become practically fatal to the charter which contains them, their most manifest operation must be to discourage investments by men whose knowledge that they are in condition to lose is well calculated to render them habitually cautious, and to supplant them by the reckless speculator, whose adventurous spirit and love of gain is unchecked by any knowledge or suspicion that he can

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suffer pecuniary injury. Thus, from the very excess of illconsidered caution, acts of incorporation may and, doubtless, often do, become potent engines of public mischief, in their corporators, who, with reckless mind or fraudulent intent, are either willing to risk the chances of disaster and loss from ill-devised restrictions designed to secure the public, or have discovered a way to evade them, though at the sacrifice of personal integrity. It is often fortunate if such acts remain a dead letter on the statute book, and it would be better still, if they were not passed to cumber it. A fair reciprocity of duty and obligation-the ordinary measure of legal protection to private rights and property—this it seems to me should be extended in all our acts by which we seek to enlist private capital to the aid of the public convenience and utility. It is not, indeed, to be lightly supposed that any State Legislature would avail itself of these clauses in its own favor to work a gratuitous injury to private indviduals; but the latter cannot be expected to invest their means on the hazard that even gratuitous injury may not be done; much less that they may not suffer consequential wrong. Capital will make the deduction, that where the right of unconditional repeal is reserved, it is intended to be, or very possibly may be, exercised.

With these views, I beg leave to suggest particularly such amendments of the Act passed at your last Session, incorporating the Atlantic and Gulf Central Rail Road Company, as may in your judgment harmonize therewith and subserve the public interests. Facilities for rapid, easy and cheap intercommunication and transportation-which shall invite immigration-stimulate private enterprize—arouse public spirit and energy and harmonize our population, are pre-eminently the wants of Florida at this time; and for one, fellow-citizens, I despair of any great or lasting improvement of any kind, in our condition, until we shake off sloth and betake ourselves manfully to the supply of these wants. A large portion of our people must remain comparatively destitute of even schools and other means of mental and moral improvement, until population thick

ens around them, and never will private energy develope itself, until our State counsels and government manifest some vigorous tokens of a public spirit. Let the State, if she wishes the character of a State and the place of a State in the hearts of her people, display some enlarged purpose and design and some executive vigor in behalf of the People and herself.

I invite you, fellow-citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives, if the views of the Executive with regard to any proposed measure do not meet your opinions, to devise some plan better adapted to the ends proposed, and provide for its efficient execution with the appropriate means of the State, so that two years' more inaction may not follow your present Session, and the State of Florida continue and remain the only State of the Union which has taken no step to better her condition by works of Internal Improvement.

As yet, the Internal Improvement Fund is intact, and one more legislative opportunity remains to unite public and private means and energies in a State enterprize; but it is easy to see the probable result of a little more procrastination. Local and isolated schemes will soon be clamorous for an appropriation from this Fund; and however meritorious those may be which shall first secure it, all subsequent appropriations will be made with regard, not so much to Internal improvements, as to what may be considered an equal distribution of money. But if a wasteful and unprofitable expenditure of this Fund were all the consequence to be feared, my own anxiety would materially abate. Worse results will, in all probability, follow, in sectional jealousies that may arise, or become embittered into enmities, in the course of this scramble for public money—interrupting all the ordinary currents of political action, and, perhaps, demoralizing and corrupting legislation itself. Thus, this munificent fund, which ought, if wisely managed, to be of so much common utility to the people, may be a source of almost unmixed evil and mischief. From such a catastrophe, I again invoke the General Assembly