Foreign Commerce (1819)

BY LATE CONSUL DAVID BAILIE WARDEN

IN commerce and navigation, the progress of the United States has been rapid beyond example. Besides the natural advantages of excellent harbours, extensive inland bays and navigable rivers, it has been greatly in favour of their commerce, that it has not been fettered by monopolies or exclusive privileges. Goods or merchandise circulate through all the states free of duty, and a full drawback, or restitution of duties of importation, is granted upon articles exported to a foreign port, in the course of the year in which they have been imported. Commerce is considered by all those engaged in it as a most honourable employment. In the sea-port towns, the richest members of society are merchants. Youths of sixteen are sent abroad as factors, or supercargoes, to every commercial country, intrusted with the management of great concerns. Stimulated by the prospect of independence, they study the manufactures and markets of foreign states; the quality, value, and profits of every commercial article, while the youth of other countries, of the same age and rank, have not formed a thought of a provision for future life. Maritime and commercial business is executed with more celerity and less expence than in any other country. Vessels in the ports of the United States are laden and unladen in the course of a few days, whilst in those of other countries, as many months are required for the same purposes, owing to tedious regulations and less enterprise. Merchant vessels are built and prepared for sea in the course of four or five months, and they sail faster than those of any other country. The schooners constructed at Baltimore, and known by the name of "pilot-boat schooners," have often sailed with a cargo from an American to an English or French port in seventeen or eighteen days. The American seamen are extremely active and enterprising. Sloops of sixty tons, and eleven men, have sailed from Albany, (160 miles up the Hudson’s river,) to the coast of China. The first of this description which arrived there was believed by the natives of the country to be the long-boat of a large merchant vessel, which they vainly looked for during several days. Nantucket sloops of eighty tons, with ten men, double Cape Horn, and pursue the whale fishery in the South Seas. With similar vessels, numerous voyages have been made from the port of New York to the cold regions of Southern Georgia, for the skins and oil of seals and sea-elephants. The American whalemen, after visiting the south-western coast of New Holland, and California, the Malouin, or Falkland, and other isles, touch for refreshments at the Cape of Good Hope, at the Sandwich Islands, or ports of Chili. A commerce with the Fegee Islands has been carried on by small vessels in trifling articles of hard-ware, which they exchanged for sandal-wood; and with this article they proceeded to Canton, where it was sold for the purpose of incense in religious ceremonies, at the rate of 400 dollars per ton. The American pilot-boats have lately visited the ports of Santa Fe, Caraccas, and Buenos Ayres, for the commerce in dollars and raw materials. Without any previous knowledge of routes, winds, tides, or harbours, the American whalemen and pilot-boat seamen have visited every coast, and, to the astonishment of Europe, have made shorter voyages than old and experienced navigators. Falkland’s Island, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting place in the progress of their victorious industry. "No sea but what is vexed with their fisheries, no climate that is not witness to their toils.["] Since the commencement of the war in 1812, the American public and private armed vessels have visited every sea, from Kamschatka to the Irish Channel, and have captured British merchant ships at the very mouths of British harbours. The great injury done to the commerce of England during that war, notwithstanding her powerful navy, bears strong testimony to the activity and enterprise of American seamen. More than 1700 of her vessels were captured during the course of the war; and it has been stated, that only one out of three American vessels employed in commerce were taken by the English during the same period. The state of European warfare, from the year 1802 to 1812, gave to America almost all the carrying trade, or freight of the commercial world, valued at ten per cent. upon the capital. The United States also gained five per cent. by exchange, so that the annual profits of commerce and foreign navigation have been estimated at fifteen per cent. upon the capital.

D. B. Warden, (Edinburgh, etc., 1819), III, 280–286.