the agricultural products of the fertile valley of the Tennessee, and the whole coasts of the northern lakes. The introduction of steam-navigation, to which I shall fully refer hereafter, affording greatly increased facilities for the conveyance of merchandise to and from New York by means of the numerous navigable rivers which intersected that and the neighbouring States, naturally gave an enormous impulse to its navigation, while the coal from the great Pennsylvania coal basin contributed essentially to its prosperity.[1]
Boston ships extend their trade to India and China. Nor was the prosperity confined to New York. It extended for many years to all the ports of the Union. Boston, which, twenty years before the Declaration of Independence, was only a village containing about twenty houses, and, so late as 1822, was still governed by a body of "select men," according to the custom of New England [the people, till then, declining to adopt a municipal government], vied with New York in the Foreign Trade which had arisen, and early in the present century despatched
- ↑ In the year ending 30th September, 1822, the tonnage of American vessels entered inwards at New York was 217,538 tons, cleared 185,666, against 22,478, and 17,784 tons foreign vessels, respectively. But for the year ending June 30, 1874, the proportion of entrances at the Port of New York was: American vessels, 1,124,055 tons; foreign vessels, 3,925,563. The clearances were in somewhat the same proportion. The chief causes of these extraordinary changes will appear in the course of this work. In 1850, 2,632,788 tons of American shipping, and 1,728,214 tons of foreign shipping cleared from the ports of the United States. In 1860, the relative proportions were, native vessels, 6,165,924 tons: foreign, 2,624,005; but in 1871, while the clearances of American vessels had fallen to 3,982,852 tons, the clearances of foreign vessels from the ports of the United States had risen to 9,207,396 tons! I take these startling figures, which I wish my readers to bear in mind, from the United States' official reports, for history is of little value unless it teaches useful lessons.
