ANALECTIC MAGAZINE AND NAVAL CHRONICLE. OCTOBER, 1816. ORIGINAL. A Statistical View of the Commerce of the United States of America: its Connection with Agriculture and Manufactures: and an Account of the Public Debt, Revenues, and Expenditure of the United States. With a brief Review of the Trade, Agriculture, and Manufactures of the Colonies, previous to their Independence. Accompanied with Tables, illustrative of the Principles and Object of the Work. By Timothy Pitkin, a Member of the House of Representatives of the United States from the state of Connecticut. Charles Hosmer, Hartford, 1816, 8vo. pp. 436. OUR readers need not be told, that, by the right of discovery, Henry VII, of England, laid claim to the whole of North America; and that, between the 29th and 48th degrees of latitude, it was parcelled out by him and his successors in grants, principally to single, enterprising individuals. Avarice was originally at the bottom of the scheme; and accordingly the colonies were always considered as mere appendages to the mother-country. The whole. system of maternal policy was calculated to make them entirely subservient to the interests of England:-all their wants were to be supplied from what was then usually denominated home; nor could their own produce be carried in any but British vessels, or be landed in any but British dominions.* To render the latter provision the more effectual,-it was enacted by parliament, in 1660, that all colonial produce should be laid on shore,' in some port belonging to his majesty's kingdom,-under the penalty of forfeiting not only the goods themselves, but the vessels in which they were earried. By another parliamentary enactment of 1663, no European commodities could be imported into the colonies,-except they were shipped in English vessels and from English ports: a disability which was a little ameliorated, however, by a drawback of duties on their exportation to this country. The policy of these regulations was three-fold:-to draw from the American settlements an immediate supply of agricultural productions, to prevent the dangerous increase of their wealth, by circumscribing the extent of their commerce,—and to secure their perpetual subjection to the mother-country, by making them continually feel the ties of dependence. This system of cramp ing and exsiccating the colonies was gradually made more and more rigorous; and subsequently to 1766 their trade was entirely limited to Great Britain, to the West-Indies, to certain parts of Africa, and to that section of Europe which lies south of Cape Finisterre. But in spite of every restriction the increase of the colonies, both in numbers and in wealth, created ere long the jealousy of the parent state. Besides the commerce with Africa of negroes and New-England rum, they-particularly the northern colonies -carried on with the West-Indies a very lucrative exchange of lumber, fish, grain, and other provisions,-for rum, sugar, cof fec, salt, molasses, and every other article, the exportation of There was a distinction, however, between what were called enumerated and non-enumerated commodities,-between such, in other words, as were exclusively confined to the market of the parent country, and such as might be transported to any part of the world. The distinction was hardly worth making; for the former embraced all the most important articles of commerce,—such as sugars, tobacco, cotton wool, indigo, ginger, fustic, and other dying woods; to which were added, molasses, tar, pitch, turpentine, hemp, masts, yards, copper ore, pig and bar iron, pot and pearl ashes, beaver skips, whale fins, hides, &c. Rice and lumber were at first enumerated; but they were subsequently permitted to be shipped to any European port south of Cape Finisterre,-where also a statute of 1768 obliged all the non enumerated articles to be carried. which was not prohibited. This trade was indiscriminate; and as there were several foreign West-India islands whose superior fertility gave them an advantage over those possessed by the English, the greater commerce of the former was a subject of discontent to the merchants and planters of the latter. Again, the introduction of a few domestic manufactures, such as some woollen and linen cloths, iron, hats, paper, &c.-very naturally accompanied the increased population of the colonies,-and quite as naturally excited the jealousy and complaint of the manufacturers in the mother-country. In 1731, the murmurs of the merchants, planters, and manufacturers had grown so vexatious and loud that parliament was obliged to direct the board of trade and plantations to make a report concerning those prosperous parts of colonial economy which were detrimental to the trade, navigation, and manufactures of Great Britain;'-a direction which exhibits at once the light in which the colonies were held, and the miserable mistake of English statesmen in that period-who thus gratuitously assumed that the interests of the colonies could be incompatible with the general interests of the empire. 6 From this report it appears that, though some woollen and linen cloth was made in New-England, New-York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, the grievous manufacture of the former extended only to the wool of such sheep as every agriculturist was obliged to have on his farm: and that what linen was manufactured consisted merely of coarse cloths, bags, traces, and halters for their horses, articles which surely could be no great subject of commercial jealousy, and which the colonists had ventured to make for themselves, because their own flax and hemp were more durable and more easily raised than those which they could get from any part of Europe. What should have quieted still more the jealousy of the mother-country,-the report goes on to state, that the high price of labour in America rendered the manufacture of linen 20 per cent. and the manufacture of woollen 50 per cent. dearer in the colonies than in Great Britain.-About this time was commenced the system of sending circular queries to all the colonial governors in order to learn the interior state of each settlement: and by their own accounts,-which, however, must not be too implicitly relied on, there was not in all the provinces a sufficiency of domestic manufactures to supply one sixteenth of their whole demand. The British West-Indians still continued their importunate cries against the trade of the colonies with those islands which belonged to other nations;-and in 1733 a parliamentary statute imposed a duty of 9d. sterling on every gallon of rum, 6d. on every gallon of molasses, and 5s. on every hundred weight of sugar, imported into Anglo-American plantations from foreign sugar colonies. The duty on rum was subsequently reduced to 6d.—that on molasses to 3d. on the gallon: but it was always considered in the just light of a sacrifice to the West-Indian interest; and every possible expedient was adopted for the evasion of its payment. In 1732 the exportation of colonial hats was forbidden under severe penalties; and in 1750 the manufacture of pig and bar iron was alike the subject of statutable prohibition. Its importation into England, in the raw state, however, was encouraged both by bounties from parliament and by premiums from the society instituted at London for the encouragement of arts, manufactures, and commerce.' Bounties and premiums were, also, bestowed, at successive periods, upon the importation into the mother-country of almost all the articles of Colonial produce,—such as tar, pitch, rosin, turpentine, indigo, hemp, flax, logwood, and lumber of every description. In 1749 the population of the North American colonies was estimated at 1,046,000; and their annual imports from England at about 900,000l. At the commencement of the war of 1755, between England and France for colonial boundaries, the imports of those provinces which are now the United States rose at once to nearly double their former value; and during the five years of its continuance there was an annual increase of about 300,000/. sterling. The previous encroachments of the French made the British colonists feel a great interest in the result of the contest; and they voluntarily assumed more expense in carrying it on than was absolutely demandable. As a smuggling trade was carried on between the colonies and the foreign West-India islands, it is impossible to ascertain from the custom-house books the precise state of their exports and imports previous to the year 1776. These, however, are the only |