The military manufactures, which are necessary to the defence of the United States, have been denied to them by the situation or the laws of several foreign countries. These things have therefore been particu larly aided by the federal and state governments. The manulacture of saltpetre has been brought to a state of copious and regular production.
Most of the operations of the American people, in their ordinary business, have been elicited by occasion. Hence it is, that the desire of a market at the farmer's door has led our women to the distaff and the loom, arid has created the distillery wherever there is produced a surplus of graM. Hence also it is, that mill-carders, spinners, fullers, weavers, hatters, shoemakers, smiths, carriage-makers, and many other of those useful work men, are found in all our states and many of our counties and townships ; and they often form a considerable por tion of the inhabitants of the cities, towns, villages and hamlets.
The distance of the United States from the countries which would consume their productions and furnish their supplies, with the consequent charges of exporting the first and importing the last, are found to operate as a powerful encouragement to manufacturing in America. The duties on entry and export in Europe, and of entry here, add to the encouragement. This advantage, aris ing from the nature of things, can never fail or even be diminished.
The constant excitement on the subject of manufac tures produced the cultivation of cotton, the introduc don of the Merino sheep, and labour-saving machinery, and successful experiments in the labour-saving pro cesses. It has also diffused a liberal and useful pursuit of chemical science and practice, and many advantages in the fossil department of natural history, and its rela tive arts and trades.
Of all the consequences produced by the successful national industry of the United States, none is more perceptible, more considerable, or more pleasing, than the increased expenditures in the importation, manu facture and purchase of books, draft ings and maps, and descriptions, models, specimens, in the useful, liberal and fine arts, and in the circle of the sciences. Nor has the field of taste, of morals, or of religion, been forgotten or undervalued. Our numerous gazettes, however occupied by business, politics and party, are great channels of valuable knowledge ; and periodical publications, both professional and general, have every where arisen.
The foreign commerce of this country has sustained many changes and trials. The wars, which have afflict ed Europe for nearly twenty years, have occasioned passion and violence often to encroach upon peaceful and regular neutral nations. Sometimes also the neu trals have been impelled by foreign injustice, or tempt ed by their own desires of gain, into commercial stra tagems and devices, subjecting them to natural suspi dons and law ful condemnations. The pretensions of belligerelits have been too far extended ; and the pro perty, flag, and persons of neutrals have been subjected to illegitimate capture, abuse, and coercion. The in juries received from belligerent powers, and the various expedients of our own country to prevent or to cure the disorders of commerce, have reduced our operations in the last year to toss than two-thirds of their former greatest amount. The exports of our own produce, in
cluding the outlets by land, arc not less perhaps than in the greatest former instance ; but those of foreign goods cannot amount to one third-part of the year 1807. The present, perhaps, as the moment of crisis, is tnat of the utmost difficulty and suffering. The last year however exhibited an expor ;won of sixty-two miliions of dollars, which is nearly equal to lourteen millions sterling ; a sum, which, in proportion to the total num ber of national population, is not equalled by the whole dominions of any government in the world. No ex change between sister kingdoms under the same crown, or between the metropolitan states and their own colo nies, can be fairly introduced in this comparison.
There is a great operation in the accumulation of wealth in the United States, peculiar, in its degree, to their alihirs. The clearing of lands, the making of new roads, the erection of new bridges, dwellings, workshops and manulactories, and other new establishments, and the building of ships for sale, arc the several parts of this important operation, none of which can be exhibited in the statement of those exports of merchandise, which may have been mistaken for the total surplus prouuction of our land and industry. Let us suppose, for example, that two thousand families, in a section of the wooded country of New York, Pennsylvania or Virginia, had entered on the first day of the year upon two thousand tracts of uncleared land, with a view, respectively, to settle and improve one farm of two hundred acres. On the last day of the same year they have respectively cleared ten acres, erected their simple log dwellings, and cover for their little stock of cattle, and sowed the ten acres with seed wheat. In 1811, the year of the operation, the whole mass of the land had produced nothing, being universally under wood. At fifteen bushels to the acre, it produces in 1812, an aggregate quantity of 300,000 bushels, worth, moderately, as many dollars. Three hundred thousand dollars at 5 per cent. is the interest of a capital of six millions. The buildings are erected of wood, and stone, which cost nothing, but cumber the ground, and interfere with cultivation. In like manner, rentable property is so fast created, that Philadelphia and New York have each passed from the forest state to the condition of comfortable and hand some cities of one hundred thousand persons; and Bal timore, transcending all instances of private effort, un aided by a government or by redundant capital, has risen to nearly half the numbers of Philadelphia and New York in forty or fifty years. Thus it is, that our farms are cut out of the forests, and our cities are ma nufactured by the hatchet and the trowel, out of the spontaneous productions of the soil and the quarry. By such means have we grown in two centuries out of unproductive wilds into a goodly land, producing in each of two several years astonishing exportations, worth in our markets one hundred seven millions and one half of specie dollars.