The happy situation of this people during a long war,in which they almost always enjoyed the advantages of neutrality,has given too forcible a direction of their activity and capitals towards maritime and foreign commerce.The Americans are enterprising,they carry cheap.They have introduced expenditous modes of navigation into their long voyages,which shortens them,renders them less expensive,and corresponds with those improvements which in the arts diminish the costs of production.In fact the Americans have drawn to their country all the maritime trade which the English could not do.They have for many years served as intermediate persons between all the continental powers of Europe and the rest of the world.They have even obtained greater success than the English,wherever they have been put in competition with them;for instance at China.
What is the consequence?An excessive abundance of those productions,which maritime and commercial industry procure;and when the general peace came,and restored the freedom of the seas,French and Dutch vessels precipitated themselves with a sort of delirium,into the midst of a route which had just been opened,and in their ignorance of the situation of foreign nations,of their agriculture,arts,population,and means of purchase and consumption,these vessels,escaped from a long detention,carried to all parts,in great abundance,the productions of the continent of Europe,presuming that the other countries of the world,which had been so long separated from it,would be most eager for them.
But in order to purchase this extraordinary supply,it would at the stone time have been necessary,that these countries on their part should have been able to have instantly created extraordinary productions:for again,the difficulty is not how to consume European commodities at New York,Baltimore,the Havannah,Rio Janeiro,or Buenos Ayres.They would very willingly consume them there,if they had'therewith to pay for them.
Europeans require cotton,tobacco,sugar,and rice,in payment;and this demand enhances the price of them;and dear as these commodities and silver,which is also a commodity,were,you must either take them,or come away without payment;these same commodities become scarcer at the place of their origin,became more abundant in Europe,and finished by being too much so to sell well there;although the consumption in Europe is so much increased since the peace:hence the disadvantageous returns we have been witness to.But suppose for a moment that the agricultural and manufactured productions of North and South America were all at once become very considerable,when the peace took place;then their populations being more numerous and more productive,would easily have bought all that the Europeans carried there,and have given them sundry articles in return at a reasonable rate.
As to the United States,this will I have no doubt take place when they can add to the articles of Exchange with which their maritime commerce furnishes us (34)a greater quantity of agricultural produce,and perhaps also some manufactured articles.Their culture-is extending their manufactures,multiplying,and by a natural consequence their population increases with an astonishing rapidity.Afew years more and their industry altogether will form a mass of productions,amongst which will be found articles fit to make profitable returns or at least profits,which the Americans will employ in the purchase of European commodities.
Those commodities which the Europeans succeed in making at least expence will be carried to America,and those which the American soil and industry succeed in creating at a lower rate than others,will be brought back.
The nature of the demand will determine the nature of the productions;each nation will employ itself in preference about those productions in which they have the greatest success;that is,which they produce at least expence,and exchanges mutually and permanently advantageous will be the result.But these commercial improvements can only take place in the course of time.The talents and experience which the arts require are not acquired in a few months,years must be devoted to them.It will not be until after many experiments that the Americans will know what commodities they tan produce with success.Then those productions will no longer be tarried to their country;but the profit they will obtain from them will procure them the means of buying other European productions.
On the other hand,their agricultural enterprises,however rapid their extension may be,tan only by very slow degrees offer,by their productions,an opening to European productions.As cultivation and civilisation extend themselves beyond the Allegany mountains in Kentucky,and into the Indiana and Illinois territories,the first gains are employed in feeding the colonies as they arrive from the states first peopled,and in building their habitations.
The profits beyond these wants,serve to extend the clearing the woods,the next in manufacturing articles for local consumption;and it is only the savings of the fourth class which are applied in manufacturing the productions of the earth,and in transforming them for distant consumption.
