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ring the past ten years Exports. Imports. 1846-47 $3,565,000 $14,695,000 1847-'48 7,130,000 9,865,000 1848-'49 12,695,000 21,020,000 1849-'50 4,855,000 16,980,000 1850-'51 5,260,000 20,765,000 1851-'52 7,380,000 27,865,000 1852-'53 10,075,000 37,255,000 1853-'54 15,395,000 27,605,000 10,325,000 1854-'55 13,400,000 1855-'56 10,230,000 61,780,000 GOV. McRAE'S MESSAGE. We have before us the last regular message of Gov. McRae to the legislature of Mississippi. It is a forcible, well-written document-full of gratifying statements and sound practical suggestions. We give below the Governor's views on banks and the present banking system A gloomy crisis has recently come, and is now prevailing, in the monetary affairs of the country, growing out of the evils of a paper currency, inherent in the banking system, which issues it as a representative of coin, cheapening the actual value of money, and enhancing, in proportion, the price of every article of necessity, convenience, or luxury, and really representing more the confidence of the community than it does any actual value. The consequence is, that when, for n time, confidence runs high in this spurious representation of coin, large issues are made by the banks, the inferior paper currency predominates, gold and silver ceases to circulate, money becomes cheap, prices high, speculation is rife, everything is represented by a fictitious value, every individual extends his credit to the furthest extreme, and every branch of business is expanded to the utmost limit. Having reached this point. there must necessarily be a reverse; business fails to be profitable, individual credit fails with it, engagements cannot be met, confidence is destroyed, the paper currency fills the land, and is found to be the circulation, but not the money of the country ; it is n mere fictitious representative of value; the banks which have issued it cannot redeem it in coin. Gold and silver, which is actual money, then become dear : everything else, except articles of absolute necessity, becomes cheap ; credit is gone; property of every kind is sacrificed ; the laborer is thrown out of employment, or cannot obtain his hire; the producer suffers loss in the price of his staple, whatever it may be; the consumer has nothing to buy with ; distress comes upon all, and every interest of the country suffers. This condition of things necessarily grows out of the inherent evil of the banking system itself; and every reflecting mind which has witnessed even the revulsions which have occurred in our own day, from the crisis in 1837 to that which is now upon the country in 1857, cannot, it seems to me, fail to perceive and appreciate it. Missiesippi, having almost wholly rid herself of the banking system for more than fifteen years past, is not at this time SO serious a sufferer at home, in the present crisis, from the evils of a paper currency ; but its pernicious influences are felt by her in its effects upon the price of her great staple, which will not now even command more than two-thirds of its actual intrinsic market value, owing to the general failure of the banking system, and the consequent destruction of confidence throughout the whole country. As an evidence of what might have been the condition of things in Mississippi under the banking system, had it prevailed here as in other States, I have but to instance the fact that the only two solitary small banks which yet exist in the State-the Northern Bank of Mississippi and the Commercial Bank of Manchester-under, as was supposed by the country, the most prudent management, and with all the experience before them of the explosion of the banks in Mississippi, from 1837 to 1840, have both suspended payment of their notes."
