and man be brought together in barter, indigence, barbarism and social declension are unavoidable. Trade is an instinct of the animal man, and, unless there be opportunity for its indulgence, he sinks to the level of the other animals. Well has it then been said to be the "Golden Girdle of the Globe;" and, referring to its achievements, the poet has beautifully declared: "Her daughters have their dowers From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East Pours in her lap all gems in sparkling showers." During the war, the foreign exports of the country declined from an average of about $80,000,000 per annum, at the beginning of the century, to $38,527,236 in 1811; 27,855,997 in 1813, and $6,927,441 in 1814. The exports consisted of ashes, beef and pork, flour, fish, Indian corn, flax-seed, rice, tobacco, tar, pitch, rosin, turpentine and wheat. The average export between 1810 and 1814 was, of Flour Wheat Tobacco Beef and Pork 1,039,092 bbls. .1,451,920 bushels. 115,365 do. 31,140 hhds. 58,000 barrels. By the first article of the Treaty of Peace, 3d July, 1815, reciprocal liberty of commerce was agreed upon between the territories of the United States of America and all the territories of his Britannic Majesty in Europe. The first steamship sailed from the United States for Europe in May, 1819. Six years earlier, the first steamer was enrolled and licensed on the Mississippi. In 1822, ninety-eight such vessels were enrolled at New Orleans, of an aggregate of 18,000 tons. The Arkansas River had already been ascended more than 500 miles by steamers. On the 1st of October, 1823, the whole line of the famous De Witt Clinton Canal, which did so much to make New York what she is, was prepared for the reception of water. The value of dried and pickled fish exported from the United States ranged from about half a million to a million of dollars between 1812 and 1832. In whale oil and candles the increase was from about $200,000 to $1,500,000. Lumber. Naval Stores. Ashes. Furs and Skins. 1812..$1,638,000 490,000 333,000 123,000 409,000 1820.. 3,203,000 292,000 952,000 595,000 1,992,381 529,692 144,599 1825.. 1,717,571 463,897 1832.. 2,196,717 476,291 930,398 691,909 99,545 52,944 The export in value of wheat and flour averaged, during the war, thirteen millions of dollars annually, but immediately afterwards declined one-half, except for the years 1817 and 1818, when it reached an average of fourteen millions. From that time until 1833 the average was about $5,000,000. The rice trade, on the other hand, remained nearly stationary, the exports of 1815 and 1833 being the same, to wit, $2,774,418. The export of Indian corn in the same time fell off on the average about one-half, viz., from $2,000,000 to less than $1,000,000. The whole agricultural export was: The exports, produce of animals slaughtered, rose from $1,657,000 in 1812, to an average of $2,500,000 from 1821 to 1833. The tobacco trade showed exports, 1812, $1,514,108; 1832, $599,769. In the same time cotton rose from $3,080,086 to $36,191,185, of which Great Britain took $26,253,205; our manufacturing exports rose from $1,355,000 to $6,923,922. The following table will be very interesting, in comparison with those of subsequent years, showing as it does the articles in detail which were exported in 1832: The imports, from 1815 to 1817 inclusive, were classed as those paying duty ad valorem at 7 per cent., 15 per cent., 20 per cent., 25 per cent., 30 per cent., 334 per cent., and 40 per cent. Those which paid 15 per cent. in 1817 were one-third of the whole; another third paid 25 per cent. The import of the articles named was as follows: For the year 1832, the following table will show the detailed commerce of the United States with all foreign countries. Our imports from Britain and her colonies and dependencies made up nearly one-half of the whole import. The table will be interesting for comparison under other divisions of our subject. We close statistics with two tables, which show the value of the entire imports and exports of the United States from 1812 to 1833, and also the commerce of the several States for the same period : The average exports of the other States were, North Carolina, $493,270; Connecticut, $498,728; Rhode Island, $609,820, District of Columbia, $816,310; Delaware, $51,117. The exports of Alabama, which were in 1818 less than $100,000, in 1824 reached $460,000; in 1829, $1,693,958; in 1832, $2,736,387. FOREIGN IMPORTS OF THE SEVERAL STATES. As an advance in the discussion of the subject hereafter, a good deal will necessarily be said upon the subject of the tariff system of the United States, and of its effects upon the general commerce and prosperity. It will be sufficient to say, in this place, that the onerous and restrictive legislation of Congress, and its heavy protective duties, produced results which in 1832 nearly ended in civil war. The protest of one of the States (South Carolina), in 1830, against this abuse of power may well be kept upon record. She then protested 1 Because the good people of that Commonwealth believe that the powers of Congress were delegated to it in trust for the accomplishment of certain specified objects which limit and control them, and that every exercise of them for any other purposes is a violation of the Constitution as unwarrantable as the undisguised assumption of substantive independent powers not granted or expressly withheld. 2. Because the power to lay duties on imports is, and in its very nature can be, only a means of effecting the objects specified by the Constitution: since no free government, and least of all a government of enumerated powers, can of right impose any tax (any more than a penalty) which is not at once justified by public necessity, and clearly within the scope and purview of the social. compact, and since the right of confining the appropriations of the public money to such legitimate and constitutional objects is as essential to the liberties of the people, as their unquestionable privilege to be taxed only by their own consent. 3. Because they believe that the Tariff Law, passed by Congress at its last session, and all other acts of which the principal object is the protection of manufactures, or any other branch of domestic industry-if they be considered as the exercise of a supposed power in Congress, to tax the people at its own good will and pleasure, and to apply the money raised to objects not specified in the Constitution-is a violation of these fundamental principles, a breach of a well-defined trust, and a perversion of the high powers vested in the Federal Government for Federal purposes only. 4. Because such acts, considered in the light of a regulation of commerce, a re equally liable to objection-since, although the power to regulate commerce may, like other powers, be exercised so as to protect domestic manufactures, yet it is clearly distinguished from a power to do so, eo nomine, both in the nature of the thing and in the common acceptation of the terms; and because the confounding of them would lead to the most extravagant results, since the en |