for the avowal and practice of a much wiser and more enlightened policy than that by which nations were guided before, and for some years after, the close of the eighteenth century.
Early statesmen of the United States.
Their efforts to develop maritime commerce.
Perhaps no nation of modern times has produced
more enlightened statesmen than those who regulated
the affairs of the United States for full half a
century after the declaration of its independence.
They had, as we have seen, numerous difficulties to
contend with, both at home and abroad, but these
were overcome with a tact and genius which commands
our admiration. Though materially assisted
in their efforts to extend and develop their shipping
by the seafaring habits of the people, by the natural
maritime resources of their own country, and by the
advantages they derived as neutrals during the war
which so long raged in Europe, they were ever ready
to encourage increased intercourse with distant nations,
in spite of the opposition of the maritime States to
those liberal measures which they had so frequently
propounded, and in which they had been too often
thwarted.
But though the American shipowners, as a body, and as would seem to be the case with the majority of shipowners of all countries, clung to protection, they were individually quite as daring, and even more energetic, than those of Great Britain. So early in their independence as 1785 a vessel from Baltimore in Maryland displayed, for the first time, the American flag in the Canton river, where she discharged a cargo of American produce, and loaded in return a cargo of teas, China ware, silk, and
