The natural demand ; the presence of the raw mate rials, which agriculture and commerce supply ; the in genuity of native and naturalized artists ; and the im pediments to commerce have produced a rapid growth of the manufactures, which began with our early settle ments, and which have arisen since, from time to time. The greatest consumers in the world of animal food, we export none of the skins of domestic animals : we im port many : w e manufacture all. So of hemp, flax, wool, and metals. Much of these is imported : none is ex ported worthy of notice, except a little iron : nearly all of these arc manufactured. Twenty years ago, cotton was worth two shillings sterling in America, because some of our jealous foreign friends happily forbade its shipment hither. We commenced its cultivation , and we now find it at one-third of the price. Its rightful exportation is interfered with : the promotion of its manufacture is therefore full as rapid, as was the ad vancement of its cultivation. Such a people must know how to work. They must be willing to labour. It is suggested, that they are riot a manufacturing people ; but they have had intelligence and energy enough, even in this business, for which uninformed persons allege they are unfit, to make annually the whole of their wool, flax, hemp, skins, metals, and some other raw materials, into a great mass of useful things, to thrice the value of all their exported productions. What must be the bo dies and minds of a people, lightly considered as merely agricultural and commercial, who shall be found, on a careful enquiry, and after fair estimates, to have imper ceptibly reached, in the least supposable line of their national industry, to the interesting amount of nearly one hundred and fifty millions of dollars ? It was deeply lamented by the sagacious and patriotic Dr Witt, that Holland, in his time, had yet among her Population a considerable number of the ancient Flemish noble families, with large trains of unnecessary menials, averse to every form of useful exertion. Among the untitled Americans, there are no such causes for politi cal regret. The equal division of intestate property and the faithful operation of natural affection, in the forma tion of our wills, have destroyed the seeds of such a de scription of men ; and our law of naturalization obliges the foreign nobleman to divest himself of such an ap pendage, before he can enter into our political family, in the character of a citizen.
Evidences of genius, in the various branches of hu man industry, and of success in the practice, are not rare in young and simple America. The name of Ritten house, as a mechanical operator and philosopher, is yet to be equalled, by the children of science and the useful arts, even in modern Europe. The ever active and sa gacious mind of Franklin subjected each busy trade to its uncommon powers, guiding them all with profound science, and with intuitive wisdom ; yet, soaring far above this useful walk, lie tempered the rigour of hu man government, and drew from the thundering atmo sphere its fiery dangers. The energetic talents of our countrymen, seeking employment, unceasingly erase some valuable commodity from the list of our imports, by new inventions or the skilful execution of the disco veries of Europe. In naval architecture, within the limits of our past occasions, the world has given us the most favourable award. The American whaler, navigator
and mariner have no superiors. We have made our selves the cultivators of the cotton of the world ; and lately we have obtained, after many a fruitless effort, the golden ,fleece. We could have long since given to our agriculture, certain efficacious supports by means of internal industry, if other considerations of momentary weight, had not persuaded us to defer the sure and prac ticable measures. The United Americans have lent to the school of the fine arts, in the metropolitan state of our ancient empire, a distinguished class of painters, the children of nature ; and the presidency of their Royal Academy has been awarded, with an honourable superi ority over prejudice, to a native* of the American states. It may be correctly affirmed, as a conclusive truth upon the subject of intelligence and energy in the field of the useful arts, that, as we have never, till the introduction of the cotton cultivation, possessed a quantity of any raw material beyond our actual manufactory of it, so our in dustry and skill were really limited by the want of addi tional means of employing them, that is to say, by the manifest deficiency qf raw materials.
The combination of hydraulic and mechanical science, in the construction of mills, for every variety of business, is a useful and intelligent operation, for which the citi zens of America are justly distinguished. It is true, that their situation occasions the constant eliciting of the useful powers of man ; but ex quovis ligno 71071 fit Mercurius: if the Americans had not the natural capa city and practical skill and exertion, mere occasion could not draw forth these works of intelligence and energy. Other nations require the milled nail, the purified alco hol, the unmalted beer, the self-moving steam-boat, the quadrant,' the electric rod, and the revolving and pro phetic planetarium ; but heaven ordained them to rise from this infantine country. A few lustres only have rolled over our heads, since we had no moneyed capital. We had then the means, to proffer to the foreign world an exportation worth but eighteen millions of dollars. We have now a capital of one hundred and eight mil lions of dollars in exportable articles, and more than forty millions in ships and vessels. Cattle, rice, grain, tobacco, and indigo, become redundant and decline in price : we invent the farming in cotton.t Cattle, rice, grain, tobacco, and indigo, rise in value by the diversion in their favour made by the cotton cultivation. But cot ton is raised to the immense amount of seventy millions of pounds ; and becomes redundant. We then resume rice and indigo in part, and employ many of the cotton labourers in the cultivation of sugar, and in the propa gation of the best of sheep. The hand of foreign vio lence arrests our crops of cotton upon the free ocean. We manifest the impolicy of this lawless conduct by the promotion of manufactures, and create a sure and new support to our own agriculture. Thus do we tread the profitable round of sound intelligence and holiest indus try, in the peace of heaven and of our favoured land, un hurt, nay prospering, amidst the war of nations, the wreck of empires, and the fall of thrones.