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demands, and that little, from the distance of other consumers, and the difficulties of access to them, becomes of small value in exchange. We may calculate how trifling the surplus produce of the labour of a family can be, when so great a portion of it is consumed in those operations which in civilized life require but little exertion. Birkbeck tells us of a farmer who was obliged to carry his corn fifty miles to a mill to be ground, and compelled to wait there some days till his turn for grinding arrived. In such a country, the mere addition of labour beyond that which is demanded in a more improved condition of society, is an expense which amounts to as much as the rent paid in more advanced districts. But these pioneers of civilization, or rather of cultivation, as they proceed farther into the wilderness, leave behind them improvements which a better class of successors take up; thus gradually peopling the deserts with inhabitants, who in process of time become equally removed from the habits and the controul of the governing power, which, fixed beyond the Alleghany mountains, at the distance of many hundred miles, can neither enforce laws, collect imposts, nor restrain crimes.*

A population thus scattered over a very extended surface may, from that circumstance, be tolerably powerful for defensive war. The scarcity of provisions, the difficulty of transport, and many other obstacles, may prevent the success of an invading army; but it is utterly incapable of making great efforts in offensive operations. We have seen this most clearly illustrated in the war recently ended. Canada was one of the great objects for beginning the contest. The United States were at its door, their troops and stores could be conveyed thither with comparatively little expense, the population from which the troops were to be collected vastly out-numbered the inhabitants of the country to be conquered; but after every effort, a force could not be brought to bear effectually on any of the various assailable points: and after several campaigns, the assailants, far from achieving the conquest which at the commencement they considered certain, were kept in check within their own territory by a body of militia, and a small regular army, though commanded by a general whose military talents have been more

*The post office in America is, like our own, under the direction of government; and intended to be a source of revenue; but so little is the correspondence of that extensive country that it scarcely does more than defray the expense of collection. In the year 1816 the net revenue amounted only to 35,2751. in the year of war 1814 it netted only 7301.: in no year before that had it produced 25,000l. and on the average of ten years, only 16,4251. The population of Great Britain and Ireland is little more than double that of the United States, and yet such is the activity of correspondence, which is one of the surest indications of national wealth, that without a higher rate of postage than is paid in America, the revenue accruing from it has amounted to fifteen hundred thousand pounds!

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than questioned. Prussia, whose population does not exceed that of the United States, leaving at home a sufficient force for domestic defence, has brought into the field an army ten times more numerous and better disciplined than all the regular troops which America could muster. Portugal, a small but compact state, with less than half the population of North America, marched through Spain into France a much greater force than the United States have ever been enabled to bring into the field, though its territory had been previously ravaged by the French army, and its coffers emptied by their exactions.

The successful manner in which America fitted out a few ships of war during the late contest, may have induced some persons to give credit to her extravagant boasts, and to suppose that she will at no remote period become a great naval power, and, perhaps, dispute with us our superiority on the ocean. This topic merits some attention. The formation of a navy must depend on the quantity of commercial shipping, in which sailors can be previously trained in the knowledge and practice of their profession. America at present has an abundant supply of sailors, but that abundance is unnatural and principally owing to causes which have now ceased to exist, and they have become burthensome rather than beneficial to the community. The extensive war, which for more than twenty years raged in Europe, and in which all the naval powers were in turn involved, raised the mercantile navy of America to a height which it would never have otherwise attained, and which it will never reach again. At a very early period of that war, the colonies of the enemies of England could neither transmit their productions to the mother country, nor receive the necessary supplies but through neutrals; and America in that character enjoyed almost the whole carrying-trade of continental Europe. The fisheries were in their hands; and in our islands they were allowed to trade to a greater extent than perhaps was politic even at that period. All this gave a wonderful impulse to the American shipping, and increased its tonnage from 700,000 tons, the amount in 1792, to 1,350,000, the amount when the war with England commenced.

The alteration of circumstances has already diminished, and will yet more diminish the mercantile navy of America. The rate of pay in American ships in time of peace must be regulated, not by the wages of labour within the states, but by the wages which other nations pay to their sailors; if it were otherwise, the freight of goods by American ships would be much higher than by those of other countries. In a period of peace the Americans have no advantages in the carrying-trade, since they can neither build, victual, nor navigate ships cheaper than the nations of Europe.

Our northern philosophers have recently discovered, among

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other rapid advances which the United States have made, that their foreign commerce has increased, and that already their mercantile navy is within a few thousand tons of our own;' and have grounded upon this notable discovery the prophecy,' that in two or three years they must overtake and outstrip us.'* We have stated the tonnage of the merchant ships of America at 1,350,000 tons; but Mr. Pitkin, an acute statistical writer and a member of Congress, observes that of this amount only 1,250,000 were actually navigated, which employed about 62,000 men. This was the highest point to which the mercantile navy ever rose. Since the return of Europe to a state of peace, it has rapidly declined. The foreign tonnage has been reduced half, and the domestic, which includes the fisheries, sensibly diminished.+

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Whilst the mercantile navy of America has been thus dwindling down to that natural state which its limited capital and small surplus of productions will support, that of Great Britain has increased with unexampled rapidity. In the year 1811, it amounted to 2,474,774 tons, and employed 162,547 men and boys to navigate it within the seven years which have since elapsed, a great accession has taken place, and the tonnage now amounts to 2,783,940, navigated by 178,820 men. Whilst America, in the most flourishing state of her commerce, could only draw supplies for a fighting navy from 62,000 men, we have 178,000 from which to obtain the requisite recruits, without taking into our calculation the numerous maritime inhabitants who are employed in the smaller craft, which are unregistered; in the fishing boats which surround every part of our coasts; and in the boats, barges, and lighters, which conduct the commercial lading from the sea to the interior.

As the deficiency of seamen, and of the power to obtain the service of such as they have, for the navy, is an obstacle to any formidable increase of the maritime power of America, financial reasons will also be found equally to obstruct a great or rapid progress. The annual average expense of maintaining the naval force of Great Britain, during a war, may be taken at eight or ten millions sterling. To create such a force, to accumulate stores of all kinds sufficient to keep it up to its high standard, to construct arsenals, docks, and machinery, and fortifications for its defence, must far exceed any

* Edinburgh Review, No. LIX. p. 137.

+ It appears from the declaration of Mr. King, member for Massachusetts, that in January 1817 more than half the shipping which had prosecuted foreign commerce was ⚫ dismantled at the wharfs and literally rotting in the docks, and that many of their seamen were reluctantly compelled to seek employ in foreign countries. Their shipcarpenters, destitute of employ, are obliged for a living, to go into the British provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, there to cut timber, for the royal navy of England, and to build vessels to carry it to Great Britain.' This is more than sufficient to encou rage us to hope that in the next edition of the journal just mentioned, for within a few thousand tons of our own,' we shall be directed to read—' within a few million."

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sum which any government in the United States would venture to submit to the consideration of Congress. Our navy is already created, and national feelings, as well as the conviction of its boundless services to ourselves and the whole civilized world, during twenty years of tremendous and fearful conflict, will support the British nation in the necessary expense of maintaining its superiority; but the distance between creating and upholding such an implement of attack and defence is immense.

But further, if the maritime population and the finances of America should improve so as to enable them to form a navy, local circumstances of a very important nature would prevent it. The shores of the United States are nearly equal to the whole extent of coast which Great Britain presents to the sea. On the most extended part of that line, viz. from the Capes of Virginia to the southernmost boundary, there is no port in which a ship of the line, or even one of the larger class of frigates, can be received; in fact the whole southern coast of America is destitute of harbours, for the rivers on which Charlestown and Savannah are built, have bars which, except at spring-tides, preclude the entrance of even the smallest frigates. The great rivers Chesapeak and Delaware, though capable of admitting large ships, afford no security against a superior naval force. New York, Newport in Rhode Island, and Boston, though tolerable harbours, may be easily blockaded, and the ships that rendezvous there be rendered useless, whilst a small naval force might scour every harbour and river to the southward of them. A country so extended as America would find difficulties in forming a naval force, which are not experienced in Great Britain. In a case of great emergency the whole of our naval population might be concentrated at any one point, so as in six or eight days, if it were necessary, to man a larger fleet than was ever yet equipped; but if America had an equal fleet in the only ports which will admit it, so long a period must elapse before her maritime population could be collected, even if the power of impressment were exercised, that the whole might be very leisurely destroyed before the hands could be brought together to man them.

America, above every other country, is interested in maintaining the peace of the world. She has indeed prospered by the troubles of Europe, but it was only so long as she kept herself free from hostilities with all parties; and as far as she has received any check, it has been owing to her having forsaken the course which Washington, the greatest character she has produced, both prescribed and followed. It is especially her interest to keep on friendly terms with this country if she wishes to preserve and ex-` tend her commerce, and to find a certain market for her domestic produce. From the return made to Congress for the year ending

30th September 1818, it appears that the total value of her exports amounted to 73,854,437 dollars, of which Great Britain alone took 44,425,553, being nearly two-thirds of the whole, and more than four times the value of the second largest amount, or 10,666,789 dollars, taken from them by France. On the other hand, it is the interest of this country, and we may safely add the wish, to preserve peace with America. It is her interest, because that great continent bids fair to become the best mart for her manufactures; and she cannot possibly harbour a thought to disturb the general peace, so necessary for all Europe, and more especially perhaps for herself. It is with regret, therefore, that we find Mr. Bristed predicting a naval contest in terms altogether calculated to stimulate and hasten the struggle which he foresees. It is true, as he says, 'two suns cannot keep their stations in one sphere;' but that of his adopted countrymen has not yet climbed this envied height; and, to our homely conception, the period is far beyond mortal ken which shall witness the portentous opposition of the two luminaries,' and the decline of that whose beneficent beams have so long cheered and invigorated the world. It is the wildest of all possible infatuations to suppose, that the partial success of a few vessels can have the least bearing on the great question of 'naval superiority.' The capture of a sloop, a frigate, or even a ship of the line, determines nothing beyond its own fate: the preponderance of naval power must always depend on the equipment and appointment of fleets of large ships. With the seamen of a ruined commercial marine thrown wholly out of employ, it would indeed have been surprising if five frigates could not be manned with picked men, many of whom were prime British seamen, and, not a few, deserters from the British navy, who either fought with that desperation which the halter round their necks inspired, or, as in the case of the frigate captured near Valparaiso, escaped from the expected justice of their country in the moment of defeat. But when England was carrying on the commerce of the world, which with her fisheries and the coasting trade created a demand for 200,000 seamen; when her naval store-ships and transports averaged the enormous amount of 250,000 tons, and required 15,000 seamen to navigate them; when her regular navy demanded 145,000 men, it must and did necessarily follow, that the crews of the ships of war, more especially those last fitted out, were composed of all manner of men-foreigners, landsmen and boys. It is by no means improbable also that, from the nature of the long war in which we had been engaged, a relaxation of strict discipline in the exercise of the guns might have taken place. The decisive battle of Trafalgar had left no enemy on the sea to contend with; and this event, added to the subsequent blockading system, which put an

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