INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT.– The spirit of improvement is certainly more animated than it has been in Virginia, since the check it received from the injudicious prosecution of the James River Improvement. Many important projects have been started since the last summer, among which are two of very recent agitation– namely, a rail-road from Staunton to some point on the Potomac, for which a charter has already been applied for to the General Assembly– secondly, a canal through the Valley of the Shenandoah, to commune with the Potomac at Harper’s Ferry.
Both of these schemes are no doubt practicable, though one of them at least, is of problematical success for a length of time to come. They deserve attention however, in another aspect– as indicating either a natural tendency of the commerce of the Valley to descend it, and seek a market out of Virginia– or a disposition of the public there to give it that direction, from the existence of dissatisfaction with the policy of the Legislature. That policy has been to induce it to come to Richmond, and it would be well if the General Assembly would direct its attention to the obviously coming consequences of its inactivity and supineness in affording the facilities necessary to realize its own views.
The Shenandoah Canal has been brought before the public in an especial manner, in the Winchester papers, by a correspondence between James M. Hite, Esq. of Frederick, and Hon. C. F. Mercer, in which the practicability and benefits of the work are favorably considered by the latter.
